Font-management program
Encyclopedia
Font management software is utility software
that computer users use to browse and preview font
s and typically to install and uninstall fonts. In addition, depending on the individual font management program's capabilities, users can also
, publishers
(such as book publishers and news and periodical publishers), web-site designers
, interface designers
, illustrator
s, packaging designers, typeface
designers, letterpress printers
(using plates made from page layout programs), motion-graphic
and film-title design
ers, advertising agencies
, signage and wayfinding (environmental graphic design studios), industrial design
ers, and architectural firms
that have in-house 2D design-staff who work with signs and typography.
These people require fonts as a basic part of their job. They purchase their font
s and typeface
s either directly from type foundries
large and small, such as Adobe Systems
, Carter & Cone, FontBureau, Font Shop, Hoefler & Frere-Jones
, Linotype, Paratype, P22
, Stone Type Foundry; or from websites specializing in selling fonts. Eventually, they may end up with hundreds or even thousands or tens of thousands of fonts; hence the need to manage those fonts. Effective, reliable, and easy-to-use font management can help.
Once a font is found, a person can view the individual glyph
s (letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other components of a font), and can visually compare two or more fonts with each other.
Font management software often provides details on fonts such as how many glyphs are in the font, whether the font can be embedded (such as in PDFs), and the person or foundry that created the font.
This capability is especially important on older versions of the Microsoft Windows
and Apple Macintosh operating systems, as with those systems, fonts are normally always active and available to all programs that use or display text. However, these operating systems have internal limits on active fonts; beyond that point, you may experience system problems.
Some font management programs can activate one font, several fonts, or a specific group of fonts when a specific application (such as Adobe's Creative Suite series) or document is launched. When the application or document is closed, the font management software can deactivate those same fonts. That way, fonts that are needed only for specific applications or projects can be made available on the fly, then put away when not needed, thereby reducing the load on the operating system.
Linux
-based operating systems generally do not pre-load fonts on a system-wide basis. Instead, each application loads them as it needs them, leaving no need for a font management program. However, current Linux desktop environments (such as KDE
and Gnome
) manage fonts for applications using their internal framework library calls for font display, thus allowing management of fonts centrally and comfortably via the GUI.
Many Linux distributions supply a font server program (such as X Font Server
) for distributing fonts over a network.
Note: Surprisingly, information on supported fonts is not readily available from many manufacturers. However, at a minimum most of the major commercial programs support OpenType and TrueType fonts.
Utility software
Utility software is system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility or tool....
that computer users use to browse and preview font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
s and typically to install and uninstall fonts. In addition, depending on the individual font management program's capabilities, users can also
- activate and deactivate fonts (users can do this manually; sometimes programs will do this in conjunction with specific software, such as Adobe's InDesign)
- protect fonts that are required by the system by preventing them from being uninstalled
- organize fonts by groups and libraries
- find and uninstall corrupt fonts
- rename font files
- view fonts that are not currently installed
- print font samples or font books illustrating some or all of the fonts on the system
- sort fonts according to different criteria
- search for fonts meeting specific criteria
Uses
Fonts - and therefore font-management programs - support people in a variety of professions: graphic designersGraphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
, publishers
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
(such as book publishers and news and periodical publishers), web-site designers
Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
, interface designers
User interface design
User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user's experience and interaction...
, illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
s, packaging designers, typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
designers, letterpress printers
Letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is relief printing of text and image using a press with a "type-high bed" printing press and movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image...
(using plates made from page layout programs), motion-graphic
Motion graphics
Motion graphics are graphics that use video footage and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion or rotation, graphics are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via electronic media technology, but may be displayed via...
and film-title design
Film title design
Film Title Design is and always has been an essential part of any motion picture. Film Title Design was originally a motionless piece of artwork called Title Art....
ers, advertising agencies
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
, signage and wayfinding (environmental graphic design studios), industrial design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
ers, and architectural firms
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
that have in-house 2D design-staff who work with signs and typography.
These people require fonts as a basic part of their job. They purchase their font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
s and typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
s either directly from type foundries
Type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...
large and small, such as Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
, Carter & Cone, FontBureau, Font Shop, Hoefler & Frere-Jones
Hoefler & Frere-Jones
Hoefler & Frere-Jones is an influential type foundry in New York City, run by designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones. With both their similarities and their likings it was only a matter of time that both their paths would come across and would have became business partners. Both Hoefler...
, Linotype, Paratype, P22
P22 type foundry
P22 type foundry is a digital type foundry from Buffalo, New York, that develops and markets typefaces for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. The name P22 has no specific significance and was used prior to the type foundry as a label for various art projects including an ambitious mail art...
, Stone Type Foundry; or from websites specializing in selling fonts. Eventually, they may end up with hundreds or even thousands or tens of thousands of fonts; hence the need to manage those fonts. Effective, reliable, and easy-to-use font management can help.
Objectives
Most operating systems come with basic font management abilities, limited to installing or uninstalling; however, people who use many typefaces need font management software with more capabilities.Ease of Finding and Evaluating Fonts
When there are hundreds or even thousands of fonts on a system, font management software makes it easier to find, organize, and evaluate specific fonts. Using font management software, people can organize their fonts in ways that suit their needs. They can also view specific fonts in a variety of ways, such as by character or size, to better evaluate a font's suitability for a specific purpose.Once a font is found, a person can view the individual glyph
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s (letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other components of a font), and can visually compare two or more fonts with each other.
Font management software often provides details on fonts such as how many glyphs are in the font, whether the font can be embedded (such as in PDFs), and the person or foundry that created the font.
System Stability
One of the valuable uses of font management software is to improve system performance. Keeping thousands of fonts active can slow down many systems. In taking advantage of a font manager's ability to activate fonts when they are needed (either individually or in groups, such as a group of fonts for a specific project), users can reduce the system's font load.This capability is especially important on older versions of the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Apple Macintosh operating systems, as with those systems, fonts are normally always active and available to all programs that use or display text. However, these operating systems have internal limits on active fonts; beyond that point, you may experience system problems.
Some font management programs can activate one font, several fonts, or a specific group of fonts when a specific application (such as Adobe's Creative Suite series) or document is launched. When the application or document is closed, the font management software can deactivate those same fonts. That way, fonts that are needed only for specific applications or projects can be made available on the fly, then put away when not needed, thereby reducing the load on the operating system.
Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
-based operating systems generally do not pre-load fonts on a system-wide basis. Instead, each application loads them as it needs them, leaving no need for a font management program. However, current Linux desktop environments (such as KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
and Gnome
Gnome
A gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature...
) manage fonts for applications using their internal framework library calls for font display, thus allowing management of fonts centrally and comfortably via the GUI.
Many Linux distributions supply a font server program (such as X Font Server
X Font Server
The X font server provides a standard mechanism for an X server to communicate with a font renderer, frequently one running on a remote machine. It usually runs on TCP port 7100.- Current status :...
) for distributing fonts over a network.
List of font management software
Most commercial font management programs offer a 30-day free trial. You can take advantage of this to try out different programs until you find the one that suits your needs. Just be sure to uninstall or at least deactivate one program before installing the next.Note: Surprisingly, information on supported fonts is not readily available from many manufacturers. However, at a minimum most of the major commercial programs support OpenType and TrueType fonts.
| Name | Operating system | License | Author | Publisher | Supported fonts | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Type Manager Light (ATM Light) | Mac OS 8.6 through 9.1, Mac OS X Classic; Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4 | Free | Adobe Systems Adobe Systems Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States... |
ATM Deluxe was discontinued in the mid-2000s | ||
| Advanced Font Viewer | Windows | Commercial | Styopkin Software | |||
| AMP Font Viewer | Windows | Free | AMPsoft | OpenType, PostScript Type 1, TrueType | ||
| BDF Font Viewer | Windows | Freeware | Komeil Bahmanpour Komeil Bahmanpour Komeil Bahmanpour is an Iranian programmer, author, and president and co-founder of Chortkeh.- Career :In 1999, Komeil Bahmanpour was introduced to an American eforms software company willing to open overseas subsidiaries for the purpose of Middle Eastern software development and marketing... |
Chortkeh | ||
| California Fonts | Windows | Free | The Scone Company, LLC | OpenType, Postscript Type 1, TrueType | ||
| Cfont Pro | Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7 | Free | Veign LLC | Bitmap, OpenType, Postscript Type 1, TrueType | ||
| DiskFonts | Mac OS X (10.5+), Windows (XP, Vista, 7) | Commercial | Anastasiy | Bitmap, OpenType, Postscript Type 1, TrueType | Font manager panel for Adobe Creative Suite (CS3, CS4, CS5), supports FontExpert groups | |
| FontAgent Pro FontAgent Pro FontAgent Pro is font management software for the Mac OS X operating system that repairs, optimizes and organizes fonts. It is developed and marketed by Insider Software.FontAgent Pro does the following:... |
Mac, Windows | Commercial | Insider Software | OpenType, PostScript Type 1, TrueType | Initially a Mac-only product | |
| Font Card | Mac OS 10.4 (but not Mac OS X 10.6 Leopard) | Commercial | Unsanity | OpenType, PostScript, TrueType | Modifies the Font menu and the font panel in Carbon and Cocoa applications. Supports FontAgent Pro, FontExplorer X, and Suitcase Fusion font sets. | |
| FontCase | Mac OS X | Commercial | Bohemian Coding | |||
| FontExpert | Windows | Commercial | Proxima Software | OpenType, TrueType, TrueType Collections, PostScript Type 1, Bitmap and vector (*.fon) | With plug-ins for Adobe Creative Suite products (Missing Fonts Loader plug-in, Font Info plug-in, etc.) | |
| Font Explorer X Pro | Mac, Windows | Commercial | Linotype/Monotype | The Windows version is only available as part of the company's Server product. | ||
| Font Fitting Room Deluxe | Windows | Commercial | Qweas | Microsoft Windows (*.fnt, *.fon), OpenType (*.ttf, *.ttc, *.otf), PostScript Type 1 (*.pfm, *.pfb), TrueType (*.ttf, *.ttc) | ||
| Font Frenzy | Windows | Free | Timothy Williams (computer programmer) | SDSoftware | ||
| Font Manager | Windows | Commercial | Styopkin Software | |||
| Font-Manager | Linux | GNU GPL Version 3 | JerryCasiano | font-manager project | Last update: 08.2010. Depends on GTK 2.x | |
| Fontmatrix Fontmatrix Fontmatrix is a font manager for Linux desktops. It can manage fonts installed system-wide or for individual user accounts. It relies on FreeType to render font samples, and on Qt for its user interface... |
Linux, Mac, Windows | Free under the GNU General Public License GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project.... |
Pierre Marchand | Fontmatrix.net | OpenType, TrueType | |
| Font Pilot | Mac OS 10.4+ | Commercial | Qweas | |||
| Font Safari | Mac OS 9+ | Commercial | Dreystone Software | Last updated in 2006 | ||
| Font Wrangler | Windows XP, Vista, 7 | Shareware or bookware | Alchemy Mindworks | TrueType | ||
| Font Xplorer | Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4, 2000, XP | Free | Ahto Tanner | Moon Software | ||
| Font Xplorer | Windows | Commercial | Qweas | TrueType (*.ttf, *.ttc) | ||
| Free & Easy Font Viewer | Windows XP, 2000, Vista | Free | Styopkin Software | |||
| MainType | Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 | Commercial | High-Logic | OpenType, PostScript Type 1, raster, TrueType, vector | ||
| MasterJuggler | Mac OS X | Commercial | AlSoft | Outline, OpenType, PostScript, printer, screen, TrueType | ||
| NexusFont | Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 | Free | Noh JungHoon | Xiles | OpenType, TrueType, Type 1 | Last update: 09.2010. Provides: Libraries and Sets, Tags, Find of duplicates. |
| Opcion Font Viewer | Linux, Mac, Windows; requires Java 1.4.0+ | Free (and open source) | P. Chiu | Opcion | ||
| Printer's Apprentice | Windows XP, Vista, and 7 | Commercial | Bryan T. Kinkel | Lose Your Mind Development | OpenType, PostScript, TrueType | |
| Suitcase Fusion | Mac OS X, Windows | Commercial | Extensis Extensis Extensis is a software company based in Portland, Oregon. Its three main products are Extensis Portfolio, Suitcase Fusion, and Universal Type Server.... |
Was merged with Font Reserve | ||
| The Font Thing | Windows 95, 98, and NT 4.0 | Free | Sue Fisher | Sue Fisher | TrueType | A legacy font management program; has not been updated since 1999, though apparently is still popular among some users |
| Typograf | Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, XP, 2000, 2003 | Commercial | Alex Neuber | Neuber Software GmbH Neuber Software GmbH Neuber Software GmbH is a software company, that was founded in 1993. It based at Halle, Germany. It has made many famous shareware and freeware in the past 17 years. Especally Security Task Manager and FontTwister... |
Bitmap, OpenType, PostScript Type 1, printer, raster, TrueType | For Windows 95, 98, Me, and NT, you will need Adobe's free ATM Light to support PostScript Type 1 fonts |
| X-Fonter | Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 | Commercial | Blacksun Software | Truetype, OpenType, PostScript Type 1, raster, vector | ||