Font Loader

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wheaticus Orviticus
  • Start date Start date
W

Wheaticus Orviticus

I just wanted to comment that I'm suprised that I haven't seen Font
Loader from moonsoftware.com never make it to the list at
pricelessware.org

It really is an invaluable tool, allowing you to categorize your fonts
into folders that you can either install or load (temporarily until you
reboot). Normally, you wouldn't want the thousands of fonts all
installed on your system for it simply is a waste of resources and adds
to the boot time. I guess it could sorta be compared as to Font Suitcase
for the mac computers.

check it out, and yes it is free.
-w
 
Wheaticus said:
I just wanted to comment that I'm suprised that I haven't seen Font
Loader from moonsoftware.com never make it to the list at
pricelessware.org

It really is an invaluable tool, allowing you to categorize your fonts
into folders that you can either install or load (temporarily until you
reboot). Normally, you wouldn't want the thousands of fonts all
installed on your system for it simply is a waste of resources and adds
to the boot time. I guess it could sorta be compared as to Font Suitcase
for the mac computers.

check it out, and yes it is free.
Click to expand...

It's okay, but I couldn't tell if you can preview the fonts or not. On
the other hand, the venerable "Font Thing":

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/

allows this.

Other font utilities are listed here:

http://www.webattack.com/freeware/gmm/fwfont.html
 
FontLoader doesn't let you preview the fonts directly, it lets you load a
virtual installation of the font as though you had installed it - and unload
it again at will. So you can use ANY software that lets you work with an
installed font, and all your software will access it - from your art
programs (for constructing banners and the like) to your documents to font
previeers to character maps.

It lets you organise your fonts in whatever fashion you wish, smply by
putting them in different folders within the designated root folder for
uninstalled font storage. That means that you can not only keep all your
serif fonts together, add them all at once to your system when you want to
use one, then get rid of them. You can copy a font into a project folder and
load all the fonts you want to use for a given project, like a newsletter or
whatever, at the same time.

Aside from the organisational flexibility that this brings, there are two
main benefits:

1. You don't have to wade through 1000 fonts installed on your system to
find the one you want as the only fonts accessable by your programs are your
favorites that you use all the time, the standards like Arial and Times New
Roman, and the category you have chosen. So font selection is sped up.

2. AFAIK, all windows versions have a limit on the total length of installed
font names. Win98 and WinME reserve aproximatly 10K of memory for this
purpose. Exceed the limits and the system breaks. I believe that with XP
this limit is increased to 20K, but I'm not sure of that. What's more, this
memory is broken into 4k pages, which is the minimum memory that can be used
to hold any given font name. By only using the fonts you need at any given
time, you can reuse whatever of the limit is free, over and over again.

Moonsoftware actually have a free version of another peice of software they
sell, called Font Explorer, which generates previews of fonts installed on
your system. Like any other software, works with fonts loaded with
Fontloader.

Hope this clarifies the situation.

Mike Bourke
 
Mike said:
FontLoader doesn't let you preview the fonts directly, it lets you load a
virtual installation of the font as though you had installed it - and unload
it again at will. So you can use ANY software that lets you work with an
installed font, and all your software will access it - from your art
programs (for constructing banners and the like) to your documents to font
previeers to character maps.

It lets you organise your fonts in whatever fashion you wish, smply by
putting them in different folders within the designated root folder for
uninstalled font storage. That means that you can not only keep all your
serif fonts together, add them all at once to your system when you want to
use one, then get rid of them. You can copy a font into a project folder and
load all the fonts you want to use for a given project, like a newsletter or
whatever, at the same time.

Aside from the organisational flexibility that this brings, there are two
main benefits:

1. You don't have to wade through 1000 fonts installed on your system to
find the one you want as the only fonts accessable by your programs are your
favorites that you use all the time, the standards like Arial and Times New
Roman, and the category you have chosen. So font selection is sped up.

2. AFAIK, all windows versions have a limit on the total length of installed
font names. Win98 and WinME reserve aproximatly 10K of memory for this
purpose. Exceed the limits and the system breaks. I believe that with XP
this limit is increased to 20K, but I'm not sure of that. What's more, this
memory is broken into 4k pages, which is the minimum memory that can be used
to hold any given font name. By only using the fonts you need at any given
time, you can reuse whatever of the limit is free, over and over again.

Moonsoftware actually have a free version of another peice of software they
sell, called Font Explorer, which generates previews of fonts installed on
your system. Like any other software, works with fonts loaded with
Fontloader.

Hope this clarifies the situation.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Mike. It does.

By the way, what I've done in the past is to use The Font Thing to view
the fonts, then to categorize them into various folders (script,
sans-serif, etc.) Once that's done, it's a simple matter to use TFT to
find the font file you want, temporarily or permanently install it and
produce the document.
 
John Corliss said:
Thanks, Mike. It does.

By the way, what I've done in the past is to use The Font Thing to view
the fonts, then to categorize them into various folders (script,
sans-serif, etc.) Once that's done, it's a simple matter to use TFT to
find the font file you want, temporarily or permanently install it and
produce the document.
Click to expand...

Having tried both the Font Thing and the Fontloader/FontXplorer combination,
I can state that the two seem to be roughly the same in capabilities, but
very different in interface and user friendliness. Since that's often a
matter of the way the software interfaces with the user's mind, most people
will prefer one over the other, but opinion over which is better will
probably be divided. Most participants in the group seem to be fans of The
Font Thing, which is fair enough; I found the operation of it completely
counterintuitive, whereas I find FontLoader easy to use. Other people will
(have!) rated the two programs the other way around on the same basis - The
Font Thing just fits the way they work better.

I guess the good news from all of this is that there are alternatives of
equal capability - so that if one vanishes for whatever reason, we still
have the other.

As I have stated in a completely different thread, this year I am mostly
just hanging back, watching, and comprehending the PW process; but it's my
intention at this point to nominate FontLoader (and a couple of other useful
items from Moon Software) next year, as I think they are excellent programs
that have been largely overlooked by the group (because most have been happy
with The Font Thing).

Mike

Mike
 
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