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 FontVista X - 4.0font catalog & inspection utility |
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Featured Reviews
Unworkable 
- Version: 3.5, 9/10/2006 12:31PM PST
(0 of 1 users found this comment useful)
DanRobinson
I wanted FontVista to work. I really did.
I have over ten gigabytes in my Font Resource Folder. Linotype Font Explorer says 10,000+
By the time FontVista got to 3,000 fonts, it had slowed to a crawl.
Cancel.
Lets Drop subfolders in. With the second folder, 1,400 fonts.
Print to pdf.
Froze at page 2
Forget it.
I have over ten gigabytes in my Font Resource Folder. Linotype Font Explorer says 10,000+
By the time FontVista got to 3,000 fonts, it had slowed to a crawl.
Cancel.
Lets Drop subfolders in. With the second folder, 1,400 fonts.
Print to pdf.
Froze at page 2
Forget it.
Let's wait to see Version 4.... - Version: 3.0, 3/23/2006 06:23PM PST
benrush
This is better than most I've tried, but that ain't saying much.
I like the interface and the ability to pick and choose individual files. It opens folder (and subfolders) of fonts pretty fast, even when you're opening more than a thousand at once, and plays well with both active and inactive fonts in almost all formats. You can even see a Layout Preview of the pages. I like the options to hide all the active user and system fonts from your list. And, conveniently, it tells you how many fonts you've selected for printing, and how many pages that'll take.
The biggest problem is the gigantic bug that also plagues many competitors: corrupt fonts. If it encounters font that is damaged, missing a resource, or just has a bad attitude, the printing process is cancelled instantly, and the program doesn't even let you know an error has occured: the file simply fails come out of the printer. There are 2 fixes to this that I'm aware of: 1) check the "print pages as seperate files" option in the preferences, which seems to work a little better, or 2) manually scan the Layout Preview and seek out any fonts that are defaulting or bitmapping.
Option 1 is much slower, and it's useless if you're saving the file as a pdf, which i prefer so that I can save it for later printing (or take my 800 pages to Kinko's). Option 2 is more than tedious when you're printing thousands of fonts.
Also, I've had quite frequent problems with crashing, usually RIGHT AFTER it's imported a whole folder of fonts.
And though it is pretty fast at actually opening the fonts, it takes an indecent amount of time to rebuild the font list in the window when you make changes to the list. In fact, I've found it faster (when I'm building a series of font lists) to quit and re-launch the program, rather than wait for it to rebuild the list after I close the previous set of fonts.
And though you can control the number of fonts per page, columns, etc, and you can change the preview text, there are really not many layout options. For instance, you can't print a complete character map of a font (a feature that's pretty useful for referencing your dingbats and non-latin alphabets).
And you don't have many choices about what information is included on the printout. You can print the screen name OR family/style name, but not both. And there's not option for listing the font format, id#, printer font name, foundry, or other potentially useful information. You can change the page footer, but you have to go to the preferences pane.
It doesn't play well with MM fonts, but there's no option for globally de-selecting them. Also,
I wish there were a way of screening out expert, alt, and ligature versions of fonts, and a way to detect and deselect damaged fonts. It would also be nice to have process for analyzing duplicate or similar fonts, or organizing fonts by family. Or, better yet, include an option to print each font family on a separate page.
And like many competitors, it prints an annoying big black box in the place of missing characters (such as on fonts that have no lowercase characters or missing punctuation). Why not just leave those spaces blank???
You can't view individual fonts. You have to go to the Layout Preview and find it, laid out in order with all the other fonts on your list. And to make it worse, the Layout Preview window shows EVERY font you currently have imported, whether you've chosen them to print or not. I wish this window would update live as you check and uncheck fonts, so you can get a more realistic view of the layout, and use the preview double-check for any problems.
I wish the single-page print preference would work even if you're saving as a pdf.
And last but certainly not least, I wish you could save Suitcase-like "sets" of your imported fonts, so you can go back and add to or change your font library without starting from scratch.
Overall, I think it just barely meets my needs, but there are so many ways it could be better. For now, I reluctantly recommend it. But we'll see if they can improve future versions.
I like the interface and the ability to pick and choose individual files. It opens folder (and subfolders) of fonts pretty fast, even when you're opening more than a thousand at once, and plays well with both active and inactive fonts in almost all formats. You can even see a Layout Preview of the pages. I like the options to hide all the active user and system fonts from your list. And, conveniently, it tells you how many fonts you've selected for printing, and how many pages that'll take.
The biggest problem is the gigantic bug that also plagues many competitors: corrupt fonts. If it encounters font that is damaged, missing a resource, or just has a bad attitude, the printing process is cancelled instantly, and the program doesn't even let you know an error has occured: the file simply fails come out of the printer. There are 2 fixes to this that I'm aware of: 1) check the "print pages as seperate files" option in the preferences, which seems to work a little better, or 2) manually scan the Layout Preview and seek out any fonts that are defaulting or bitmapping.
Option 1 is much slower, and it's useless if you're saving the file as a pdf, which i prefer so that I can save it for later printing (or take my 800 pages to Kinko's). Option 2 is more than tedious when you're printing thousands of fonts.
Also, I've had quite frequent problems with crashing, usually RIGHT AFTER it's imported a whole folder of fonts.
And though it is pretty fast at actually opening the fonts, it takes an indecent amount of time to rebuild the font list in the window when you make changes to the list. In fact, I've found it faster (when I'm building a series of font lists) to quit and re-launch the program, rather than wait for it to rebuild the list after I close the previous set of fonts.
And though you can control the number of fonts per page, columns, etc, and you can change the preview text, there are really not many layout options. For instance, you can't print a complete character map of a font (a feature that's pretty useful for referencing your dingbats and non-latin alphabets).
And you don't have many choices about what information is included on the printout. You can print the screen name OR family/style name, but not both. And there's not option for listing the font format, id#, printer font name, foundry, or other potentially useful information. You can change the page footer, but you have to go to the preferences pane.
It doesn't play well with MM fonts, but there's no option for globally de-selecting them. Also,
I wish there were a way of screening out expert, alt, and ligature versions of fonts, and a way to detect and deselect damaged fonts. It would also be nice to have process for analyzing duplicate or similar fonts, or organizing fonts by family. Or, better yet, include an option to print each font family on a separate page.
And like many competitors, it prints an annoying big black box in the place of missing characters (such as on fonts that have no lowercase characters or missing punctuation). Why not just leave those spaces blank???
You can't view individual fonts. You have to go to the Layout Preview and find it, laid out in order with all the other fonts on your list. And to make it worse, the Layout Preview window shows EVERY font you currently have imported, whether you've chosen them to print or not. I wish this window would update live as you check and uncheck fonts, so you can get a more realistic view of the layout, and use the preview double-check for any problems.
I wish the single-page print preference would work even if you're saving as a pdf.
And last but certainly not least, I wish you could save Suitcase-like "sets" of your imported fonts, so you can go back and add to or change your font library without starting from scratch.
Overall, I think it just barely meets my needs, but there are so many ways it could be better. For now, I reluctantly recommend it. But we'll see if they can improve future versions.
I just purchased this program (against my better judgement-esp after reading all the BAD reviews it has received), but since all of our fonts are licensed and kept in immaculate condition, I purchased your software.
WHAT A MISTAKE!
Just like everyone else says, FontVista SUCKS!
Thanks for wasting my time trying to print out 4000 fonts. Crashes everytime. NICE WORK!