First impressions: FontAgent Pro 4

For those of you who’ve managed your font library with some earlier version of the program already, FAP4 doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel – it does, however, tack on some spiffy new features and makes auto-activation that much more reliable. Let’s run down the new stuff as Inside Software displays it on their web site, shall we? (my comments & screenshots following): * More Font Data than Ever : I immediately noticed that FAP – after importing a batch of new fonts – ran a process in the background called ‘profiling’. What this means is that while you’re going back to work on your file, FontAgent is compiling a slew of data about the fonts you just imported – things like the degree of the slant of your italic (or oblique) fonts, proportion, and the weight of the individual faces as compared to the ‘roman’ or default fonts in the family: What FAP4 also does during this process is to create an image preview file of what each typeface looks like when you turn on the ‘WYSIWYG’ option above the library listing in the main panel. In the past FAP created these previews on the fly, and it would slow the program to a dead crawl while you scrolled through your library. Now that FAP creates the WYSIWYG images beforehand, it makes for a *very* noticeable difference in smoothness and speed when viewing your fonts this way. * New User Interface Provides Easy Font Access : I’m not sure that the new interface makes accessing fonts ‘easier’, but then again I’m an original FAP user so I’ve always found their interface to be quite simple to get around in. The new icons are nice, though, and the whole app did get a nice refresh from the previous version’s ‘pinstriped’ look which was very ‘Jaguar-esque’. However a new feature of note in this area is the ability to sort your fonts (using a drop-down menu) by slant, proportion, weight, font format, and ‘comment’ – although I can’t actually view the comments anywhere in the main application panel — for that I’d have to right-click and select ‘get info’ on a typeface. Needless to say I’m sort of in the dark on the whole purpose of including this property in the menu. * Smart Activation Opens the Fonts You Need : Insider’s web site has the following on this: “Open documents and watch FontSavant™ auto-activate the precise fonts you need, or use MagicMatch™ artificial intelligence to rank and suggest alternatives.” I haven’t seen anything explicitly labeled as ‘FontSavant’ or ‘MagicMatch’, but the application did a nice job all the same of activating everything I needed in InDesign & Photoshop CS3. A new feature (Suitcase had this since when, forever?) that *did* surface in my testing was a ‘conflict resolver’ tool, which alerts you with a pop-up window if you’ve got multiple fonts butting heads with each other in your document.

Special note for those of us working in OSX 10.5 (Leopard) — Apple has made it virtually impossible to remove some of the ‘Helvetica’ fonts from their system library – meaning you’ll either have to use Apple’s versions in your documents (NOOOOO!!!), or disable them by mucking around deep within your system files. But with the latter option you risk making some of your Apple-brand applications unstable – or even unlaunchable! You would then import Postscript versions of those fonts to FAP and hope for the best. A third option – which is my personal choice – is to leave Apple’s system folder alone and use OpenType versions of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue, and just avoid the whole conflict nightmare altogether.

* Smart Classification Categorizes Fonts Automatically: As I work on a lot of different types of jobs, I’ve always made a habit of creating sets in my font managers according to display type so I can browse them quickly. ‘Headline’ fonts, ‘body copy’ fonts, thick fonts, thin fonts, typewriter-style fonts, handwriting fonts – you name it. With version 4, FontAgent Pro basically eliminated the need for me to do that anymore – or so it would seem (more on that shortly)… As you can see below, FAP classifies each of your typefaces, as it imports them, according to a number of categories that most designers may be familiar with: * Smart Search Finds Fonts Fast : I was also pleasantly surprised that FontAgent Pro now includes a robust, Spotlight-inspired search function that allows you to target any typeface based on a multitude of variables. Take a look at the screenshot below and have a gander at all the properties of a typeface that you can search under. Considering that version 3 basically only had a ‘name’ search, this is *light years* ahead of that.
*However* (you knew it was coming), you may notice that you can’t search under the category of ‘classification’. So while it’s nice to have all your fonts classified into categories such as ‘display’, ‘sans serif’ or ‘symbol’, there’s seemingly no way to weed out any of these fonts unless you’re inspecting each one manually in the ‘Font Data’ panel (main interface). Unless I missed a menu or a preference setting, that is. * Smart Sets that Update Automatically: This works in much the same way as the search function – virtually the same interface, but you now have the added option of ‘saving’ your search into a ‘smart set’. All the same variables as in the previous screenshot, but again – no ‘classification’ category. So it looks like I’m back to manually organizing all my ‘headline’ & ‘handwriting’ fonts – at least for now. I’m not a programmer, but it seems like this would be an easy add by Insider. Maybe someone who works over there will read this and grant my wish… * Keyword Search Finds Fonts Like Magic: Locates fonts online & on your own computer. I guess it’s *kinda* like magic. * Online Font Store Makes Buying Fonts Easy: Self-explanatory. Ties into the ‘keyword search’ feature – once your search results return and you find a typeface you’d like to buy, double-click on it to purchase. * Smart Scripts Speed Workflow: If you’d really like to get geeky, FontAgent Pro 4 comes with a bunch of built-in scripts to help organize your library, as well as the option to create your own Applescripts in OSX’s Script Editor. I wasn’t impressed with the pre-exisiting scripts, but maybe that’s because I had no desire to sort my entire library by foundry. Besides, sorting by name or by foundry can be easily accomplished by using the drop-down menu or by clicking the heads of the columns in the main application panel. * Smart Installer Gets You Started Fast: Something I should probably have mentioned right off the bat, but new to version 4′s setup process is a number of ‘plugin installation’ options that will let you either automatically place FAP’s plugins in the appropriate Quark or Adobe Creative Suite directory, or reveal them in the finder and manually install them yourself. FWIW, I had no problems with the automatic install. One less thing I had to do myself – woohoo! Conclusion: Bottom line – if you’ve been happy with the current series of FontAgent Pro programs, you’re really going to like version 4′s offerings. Seems like they’ve finally combined their existing strong suits (activation, library organization) with some extra features that some other font managers have already been boasting for a while now. However if you’re using an older version of FAP and you’re not as intimately involved with your fonts as some pros might be, you probably can stay right where you are and be happy for a long time. Keep in mind the upgrade pricing plan, too (via Insider Software): - If you purchased a previous version of FontAgent Pro before November 15, 2007, your upgrade price is $49.95 US. – If you purchased a previous version of FontAgent Pro Workgroup before November 15, 2007, your upgrade price is $64.95 US. Normally FontAgent Pro retails for $99.