I’ve always had a problem with fonts. There’s too many of them, yet you need them all.

Management on a pc, and I’m talking vista here, which I foolishly installed a few weeks after release, is painful.

I’ve always used Suitcase from Extensis. On the pc I’m still using the version that came out a few years ago. They release updates about as frequently as a US presidential election.

The version I use doesn’t work that well. The auto-activation is stuffed. Certain activated fonts do not show up in InDesign until I deactivate the fonts, give Suitcase a restart and reactivate the problem fonts. And in vista there is no windowed view, it’s either full screen or minimized.

Perhaps it’s a Vista problem, but to be frank, that excuse is wearing a bit thin now as Vista has been out so long. And in the case of Suitcase on OS X, their mac problems seem just as bad, where the excuse according to Extensis seems to be either on the doorstep of Adobe or Apple.

My knowledge of fonts other than how they look is at a bare minimum. My knowledge of the workings of font files is zero. But in this world of 3d rendering and processor pounding games and design software, surely someone could come up with a piece of software that can manage fonts in a fairly straight forward fashion.

Ideally, when you turn them on they stay on, and ditto for turning them off too. Also an auto-activation that works faultlessly. Indesign knows exactly which font you don’t have when you open a file, so why can’t a font manager do the same and find the needed font in your monstrous font depository.

While I wait, day after day, twiddling my thumbs for the ultimate font program to be created. Possibly in Scandinavia, and almost certainly by someone called Larrs, I search the web using the string ‘font program not crap vista’. One of these days…

Here are some alternatives to Suitcase, these are all the ones I know of:

Linotype Font Explorer - It’s free, which is always good. It’s still in it a beta version which is pretty flakey, but it has some good features and will hopefully be out soon as Version 1. It also promises solid auto-activation of fonts. So fingers crossed.

Font Agent Pro - Released at the end of 2007 in it’s first version. I have no idea how good this is.

X -Fonter - Shareware with a free trial. I’ve tried this, and to be honest it seems ok, but there is no auto-activation.

Printers Apprentice - Not sure about this one. As far as their website states it is only compatible up to XP and there’s no mention of Vista.

Typograf - Gets a glowing report from ZDNet. I think this is a good thing.

Maintype - This one mentions support of Vista on it’s site, and claims to have levels of functionality for both the novice and the font ninja.