From Apple and Extensis: Font management under Mac OS X

Thanks for the info and solidarity, Ramón. I'll definitely look into FontAgent Pro. But if anyone from Adobe is listening, please reconsider killing ATM Deluxe and ATR.

GG,

You are not alone. Many of us wish we had both ATM Deluxe and ATR in OS X.

Adobe will only say that there will never be a version of ATM for OS X (there is for Windoze). Period.

The preferred font manager these days seems to be FAP (FontAgent Pro). It's the closest thing to ATM as far as OS X is concerned. Its auto font activation function works well. There is a fully functional trial version.

Incidentally, I was one of the earliest supporters of Suitcase, having been a beta tester for Steve Brecher when Suitcase was essentially a one-man operation. Then Steve sold it and it went downhill after that.

Later, Adobe came out with ATM Deluxe and ATR and there was no need for any other font management utility through Mac OS 9.2.2. When Adobe decided not to support ATM Deluxe in OS X, I went back to investigate Suitcase, then at version 10. Well, Suitcase 10 was so buggy and the Suitcase Engine caused so many crashes in Classic and in straight, native 9.2.2, that, reluctantly, I couldn't consider it seriously any longer.

FontAgent Pro is not perfect and it still lacks the flexibility of ATR, but the latest version leaves Suitcase in the dust.

Can anyone explain why why why ATM was not upgraded for OSX? Especially since the Creative Suite is trouncing QuarkXpress? It's the best font management I've used...I really dislike all the font management I've tried that's available for OSX...the built-in management is too lightweight and Suitcase has proven to be unreliable in its auto-activation, and additionally I've had strange preview problems in InDesign that seem related to Suitcase as they disappear when Suitcase is off. I've also had some of the same problems Colleen described above. I never had anything close to these issues with ATM....I would give anything to be back with sweet ATM.

Hey Tim,
Thanks for your input. I'll get it straightened out someday.

Well I appreciate the advice, but I am in a difficult position. I used to use Suitcase 10 when I first upgraded to Jaguar; I had lots of problems with it. I have constant font issues in my work (All of the fonts I use have come in with projects from other people) and my employer holds me responsible for them. I am now using Panther. When the system tells me there Zapf dings are missing but I can see it in the fonts folder and in Fontbook I get really frustrated. I have tried removing the dfonts and just have mine in there, but they didn't show up in the menus. Have removed mine and tried to rely on the dfonts, that didn't work either. I am beyond confused at this point.
We had a graphic artist from a design shop we outsource to come in and troubleshoot my font problems, and she recommended ditching Suitcase and just using FontBook. She said at the design shop, they use Fontbook now. So I figured if it works for them it should work for me.
It was great to get a recommendation to use a font cache cleaner to fix my AGaramonds that look garbled on screen in Quark (they look fine in Illustrator)
but my supervisor doesn't know anything about this stuff so it was referred to tech support and they mostly know about PCs, not graphic applications on the Mac; so don't know if I'll ever hear back from them, and I am not allowed to do anything with my computer.
I am criticized at work for having all these problems and not being able to fix them. I was sure hoping that following the instructions in the Apple document, of which this thread is supposed to relate, would fix things up, but the dfont problem is just not going away. It seems that if you have a version of a font that you use for a particular project, and a font of the same name is used and provided by your system for its own use, you're going to have trouble no matter what you do.
Okay, so wah, wah, wah, I'm done whining now. I just needed to vent.

If you have more than a handful of fonts, please don't use FontBook. Font Agent Pro is a viable solution. Some folks also like Suitcase or FontReserve (these two are from Extensis).

Neil

Bob,

It's probably because Font Book is inadequate. Try FAP (Font Agent Pro).

Colleen. I once again share your pain. And, I do wish Apple and Adobe could offer a better solution tahn to say that we should make sure only one font type of the same family is active at the same time, because, as you have found, sometimes it is difficult to change (a System font), and at other times, other programs may have installed fonts for us (Adobe and Microsoft to mane two).

I just ran across a problem with Futura. Apple installs a dfont andI have my own. I Deactivated Apple's with Font Book; but, my Futura Regular Type 1 font (or Medium...different programs list the font under different names) is not selectable...only Apple's dFont. I actually have to remove Apple's dfont in order to be able to use mine. I guess that is because Adobe InDesign sees that the dfont is newer (becuase it has more characters, I have been told) and uses it...even though I can select the rest of my Fut font family.

Sigh!

For what it's worth, fonts installed in the Classic fonts folder are available to OS X native applications. However, fonts installed in the OS X system locations (including dfonts) are not available to Classic applications.

Cheers,

T

QuarkXPress v6.x IS required to run native under OS X. XPress v3, v4, and v5 cannot do this. QuarkXPress will show all fonts installed and active -- but I don't know if v6 will also show if a font is Type 1, TrueType, or OpenType.

Neil