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Font Resources of Note

...from some extensive typography and fonts research

Here I'll share some surfing and testing I've done regarding font management. Note that I've looked primarily at Mac resources, since I use a Mac, but a number of these also refer to Windows. Please let me know if any of the links go dead, or if you've had your own personal experience.

Article: Font Management in Mac OS X

Over the years, there have been a number of important utilities developed to help Mac users deal with the proliferation of fonts on their systems. Packages such as Suitcase and Adobe Type Manager provide an interface to manage sets and collections of fonts (ATM also provides a rendering engine for Postscript fonts). Designers depend on these tools to hide the majority of their libraries, which may have hundreds of families and thousands of fonts, while they work on a particular project which will rarely require more than a couple of families, perhaps a dozen or two fonts, to choose from.
This is a 2001 article by Peter Fraterdeus for O'Reilly and the Mac Developer Center:
Font Management in Mac OS X

The Mac OS X font managers review

This is a 2006 Font manager review by Dave Girard who writes:

I've been through the trenches and come up, sucking chest wound and all, with the Ars review of font management programs. I've also succeeded in not completely losing my mind while the developers updated the apps, nullifying half my criticisms in the process. Giving a lot of time to these programs in a production setting is crucial to seeing how they perform on a daily basis, and I am confident I've thrown enough varied scenarios at each to find out where they succeed and fail.

arstechnica.com

Selected Font Utilities Mac and Windows

FontVista 4.0
FontVista is a powerful font catalog and inspection utility for Macintosh. 5.28 MB | Mac OS X 10.3 or later | Demo | Download | screenshot

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Charmas 2.02
Charmas is a font catalog/browser tool. 4.75 MB | Mac OS X 10.1 or later | Shareware | Downloads | screenshot

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FontCard
1.5.1 Beta 4 / 1.5 - FontCard is a haxie that modifies the Font menu in Carbon and Cocoa applications 6 MB | Mac OS X 10.4 or later | Trial | Downloads fontcard-15.dmg | screenshot

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FontForge 20080607
Outline font editor that lets you create or edit your own fonts - 4.91 MB | Mac OS X 10.3 or later | GPL | Download | screenshot | alt

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Font Finagler
Purge cache files 3.89 MB | Mac OS X 10.3 or later | Shareware | Download FontFinagler.dmg | screenshot | alt

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Art Text 1.2.5
Art Text - Create high quality headings, logos, icons, banners and buttons 11.1 MB | Mac OS X 10.4 or later | Demo | Downloads: ArtText.dmg | screencast movie | alt | See our review in DTG

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Linotype FontExplorer X 1.2.3 Build 833
Linotype FontExplorer X - Font management software - 9.64 MB | Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later | Freeware | Rate: Good | Downloads: Windows and Mac | screenshot | alt

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Veenix Font Tools 7.5
Veenix Font Tools - Collection of modular font tools and utilities - 1.39 MB | Mac OS X 10.2 or later | Demo TypeBook_Creator_Demo.zip | Downloads: | screenshot | alt

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FontDoc 1.2.1
Pick the perfect font! - 146 KB | Mac OS X 10.2 or later | Freeware | Downloads: FontDoc.zip | screenshot (alt)

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Font Examiner 3.0.1
Font character map 1.44 MB | Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later | Shareware | Download: fontexpl.dmg | screenshot | alt

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SigMaker 3.0
Change your signature into a font - 2.76 MB | Mac OS 9.x / OS X 10.1 or later | Demo | Rate: Good (3.0/5) | Downloads many languages, Mac or Windows | Screens | alt

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Font Mate 1.1.1
Font Mate is a simple program to help you see how fonts look on your computer, and to help you find symbol characters - 2.3 MB | Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later | Freeware | Rate: Good (3.5/5) | Downloads Win or Mac | screenshot | alt

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FontMatch 1.7
FontMatch compares positive and negative space matching patterns to determine the best 'fit' - 6.1 MB | Mac OS X 10.2 or later | Demo | Download | screenshot | alt

Take advantage, and expand your creative awareness!

... and thanks for reading!

Fred Showker, Editor / Publisher of DTG Magazine

Continue for more 2008 Fonts Festival

We always invite you to share your favorite freeware or shareware fonts for the DTG readers. Got comments or suggestions? Just give us a shout.

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