What's a good font management application for Windows?

March 29, 2006 5:28 PM

What's a good font management application for Windows?

Either free or not. Please post based on personal experience with the software itself. I'm looking for a professional application though (e.g. one capable of handling thousands of fonts and their various formats).

posted by sjvilla79 to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I briefly used Extensis Suitcase and I hated it (among others). Unfortunately, I don't think there exists a truly excellent font manager for Windows, but there are a lot of half-okay ones. I hope someone proves me wrong about that.
posted by evariste at 6:24 PM on March 29, 2006

After some searching and testing myself, I found Bitstream Font Navigator to be among the best available. It's what I now use to manage the few thousand fonts on my system. It's not super-feature rich, but it's fast, stable, and supports TrueType, Opentype, and PostScript fonts. Once you spend a little time with it and define your font groups, you're good to go.

Bitstream disontinued the product and sold it to Corel after version 4 (which lacked OpenType support, ugh), and Corel now bundles version 5 (with OpenType, yay) with the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. Unfortunately, this is now the only way to get the application. Fortunately, you can download the Grapics Suite trial package from Corel's web site, and the Font Navigator doesn't expire when the trial period runs out.

See this blog entry for more details and instructions in the comments section on how to unpack the (pretty big) installer and manually extract the Font Navigator if you're so inclined. This is nice if you aren't planning on using the rest of the Graphics Suite and don't want the Corel Auto Updater &c. getting its hooks in your system.
posted by drumcorpse at 6:24 PM on March 29, 2006

OT1 Font Manager is good, not free though. Font Tools is good and free, though a bit buggy and reinstalls itself (from the orignial installation file, which if you don't have it pops up error messages) if you delete or move its icons on your desktop or start menu, which is amazingly annoying and stupid.
posted by signal at 7:35 PM on March 29, 2006

Keep an eye on Linotype FontExplorer X. I've heard a lot of good things about the Mac version, and Linotype claims a Windows version is coming soon (though it's been a couple of months since the Mac release and still no dice). The previous version of FontExplorer for Windows is also up on the site, though I haven't tried it.
posted by chrominance at 9:49 PM on March 29, 2006

Don't try the old version of Linotype FontExplorer for Windows: it's basically a Linotype catalogue, and useless for your purposes.
posted by Hogshead at 8:09 AM on March 30, 2006

I use a combination of programs, each with their pros and cons, and am always searching for better ones. akFontViewer (which is old) is great for quickly viewing installed fonts in whatever customized text I choose and the character map is great. Font Lister is good for viewing fonts in a folder and installing them directly from the program. And I like the way Opcion handles font 'favorites.'

A list from a year ago of what I want from a perfect font management program:

1. Read fonts in my system font directory as well as any non-system directory to which I point it.
2. List every font with my personalized text; don’t make me click on the font before I can see what ‘pancakes’ looks like in it.
3. Have customizable meta-data fields and/or tags so I can sort by font type, weight, mood, etc.
4. Have the option to show only the fonts I have selected/saved/flagged for comparison purposes.
5. Let me save font comparison groupings without printing or writing them down on a sticky note.
6. Show the available character map for the selected font.

And I'm still looking.
posted by rhapsodie at 3:44 PM on March 30, 2006

I've installed Typograf a few times, in order to get a handle on my disorganized assortment of thousands of fonts. rhapsodie, it might satisfy the bulk of your requirements..
posted by unmake at 2:15 PM on March 31, 2006

Sorry for my lateness back to this post. Thanks for all your answers.
posted by sjvilla79 at 7:16 PM on April 4, 2006