“Free” is what I am all about these days, whether its looking for freedom on the open road atop a Royal Enfield, or free as in no charge for software. So for two years I was pretty much happy using Linotypes FontExplorer X as a font manager for a small fleet of new shiny Macs in the studio. But when it came time to update this nice low-cost feature rich manager for CS4 and other new font-intensive software, I found out from the company that the
free version had changed to a
fee version and that any updates would require hard cash. Nothing pisses me off more then that.
So I looked at the alternatives and was not so shocked to find something very cool, after all, if you are paying for something that really should be included as part of a world-class OS, it should be very cool yes? Well, Fontcase by
www.bohemiancoding.com has done something very cool with font management, and that’s made it look and feel like music management ala an iTune’s styled interface, that even includes ratings and library sharing over your lan.
What I
like about Fontcase:
- The interface, as mentioned, it’s just like iTunes, which I love.
- The library sharing across machines on our lan - no longer do I worry about having the right font on the right machine at the right time, all the time!
- The conversion process from Linotype’s FontExplorer X to Fontcase - that was painless and seamless. All my settings were preserved. U just have to remember to clear the font cache after removing FontExplorer.
What I
don’t like about Fontcase:
- Performance, for both the import and ongoing use is a lot slower then with FontExplorer X. It’s not that the performance is bad, it’s just that you see the beachball at times, and that’s something I don’t like to see at all on my tuned iMacs and MBPs.
- There seems to be a problem with duplicates showing up within font family groupings, as illustrated below in the screenshot. I don’t understand this, but perhaps it’s a user error as I have not read the manual and don’t intend to. A cool font manager should not need one!
Well, my 15-day free trial period is almost over now, and I am seriously considering shelling out the $92 for the family pac. That’s far from free for something that should be theoretically included in OSX, but you get what you pay for as they say, so I should just shut up eh?
