FreehandMX+Panther - No grouped font families?

[radium56]

Mac OSX 10.3.2, Freehand MX last update, (Suitcase X1) - I cannot get grouped
font families under "Text" -> "Font" menu (XPress6, Illustrator do, Photoshop 7
delivers alphabet order at least)
Is it supposed to be feature, or bug? Did osx archive & install from previous
version, no complaints otherwise till now..
I have been very happy and productive with Freehand 9 till these days, but now
i find myself here... Any answer will be appreciated.

[darrel]

> I have been very happy and productive with Freehand 9 till these days,
but now

> i find myself here... Any answer will be appreciated.

Version 9 was FH's prime years. It's been downhill since then. I don't see
it improving.

-Darrel

[Rich Hudgins]

In Mac OS9 and earlier font grouping was handled system wide by Adobe
Font Reunion. That does not exist for Mac OSX. The other programs you
listed have had it built in to the program itself. Macromedia has seen
fit not to include such a feature in any OSX version of FreeHand. You
can use "Font Card" for now, search previous threads for effectiveness
reports. It has just been upgraded for Panther compatibility:

[url]http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/fontcard/[/url]

Rich

radium56 wrote:

> Mac OSX 10.3.2, Freehand MX last update, (Suitcase X1) - I cannot get grouped
> font families under "Text" -> "Font" menu (XPress6, Illustrator do, Photoshop 7
> delivers alphabet order at least)
> Is it supposed to be feature, or bug? Did osx archive & install from previous
> version, no complaints otherwise till now..
> I have been very happy and productive with Freehand 9 till these days, but now
> i find myself here... Any answer will be appreciated.
>

[maxman23]

FontCard is a suitable workaround for now, although I only have it set to work
with FH - I've heard it plays funny with Adobe apps (which take care of that
aspect of font handling anyway) I've had it loaded for two days now and it's
acted a teensy bit buggy regarding where the menu displays - once it went right
up, off of the screen, so that the list was totally invisible, rather than
dropping down into the screen; I have the text bar set to display at the top of
my main display, so when this glitch happened I had to select fonts from the
text inspector palette on my secondary display. Mind you, this happened to me
only once; quitting then re-launching FH restored things

That caveat aside, I do believe with this iteration of FC it's time to put
some money down on this handy Unsanity shareware app. Regrettably it may be
some time before we see font family categorization in FH, if ever, so for now
this is a decent fix. I don't think I could go back to the old mess 'o fonts
situation. I am not fond of most Unsanity haxies because I don't think they add
to over-all system stability, but in this once case I need to be able to tame
fonts while using Freehand

G5 1.8 single, 1.5 Gigs RAM, OS 10.3.2, FH MX 11.01 Build 6

[Wes Rand]

maxman23 wrote:

> FontCard is a suitable workaround for now, although I only have it set to work
> with FH - I've heard it plays funny with Adobe apps (which take care of that
> aspect of font handling anyway) I've had it loaded for two days now and it's
> acted a teensy bit buggy regarding where the menu displays - once it went right
> up, off of the screen, so that the list was totally invisible, rather than
> dropping down into the screen; I have the text bar set to display at the top of
> my main display, so when this glitch happened I had to select fonts from the
> text inspector palette on my secondary display. Mind you, this happened to me
> only once; quitting then re-launching FH restored things
>
> That caveat aside, I do believe with this iteration of FC it's time to put
> some money down on this handy Unsanity shareware app. Regrettably it may be
> some time before we see font family categorization in FH, if ever, so for now
> this is a decent fix. I don't think I could go back to the old mess 'o fonts
> situation. I am not fond of most Unsanity haxies because I don't think they add
> to over-all system stability, but in this once case I need to be able to tame
> fonts while using Freehand
>
> G5 1.8 single, 1.5 Gigs RAM, OS 10.3.2, FH MX 11.01 Build 6
>

Aggggh! Burned again! I installed the new FontCard two days ago and
today it stopped working. I've had horrible luck getting it to work
consistently. Back to long font menus here again.

[Rich Hudgins]

Are you both talking about 1.0.3 as the latest version? It was released
on the 11th, and Wes is saying two days ago on the 12th which would make
it the 10th and possibly 1.0.2. Just want to make sure you have the latest.

Rich

Wes Rand wrote:

> Aggggh! Burned again! I installed the new FontCard two days ago and
> today it stopped working. I've had horrible luck getting it to work
> consistently. Back to long font menus here again.

[Predicta]

Font family grouping is a BIG deal. I'm stunned it's been left out. I attended
MacWorld in SF in January and spoke with a MM rep. He said he knew it was a big
deal and encouraged me to submit it to the features request (a lot of good that
will do). In any event, I tried FontCard which hasn't worked at all. Beside
assigning FH in FontCard ? is there anything else to do to get it to work

Mac>1.8 Dual>1.5GB Ram>Panther>FHMX>Suitcase X

[Wes Rand]

Rich Hudgins wrote:

> Are you both talking about 1.0.3 as the latest version? It was released
> on the 11th, and Wes is saying two days ago on the 12th which would make
> it the 10th and possibly 1.0.2. Just want to make sure you have the
> latest.
>
> Rich
>
> Wes Rand wrote:
>

>> Aggggh! Burned again! I installed the new FontCard two days ago and
>> today it stopped working. I've had horrible luck getting it to work
>> consistently. Back to long font menus here again.

Yeah, I saw the latest version posted on versiontracker.com and decided
to give it another go.

[Judy Arndt]

I'm trying FontCard 1.0.3 in FHMX after giving up on the previous version.
It's driving me crazy.

Normally, the font of the highlighted text displays immediately in the
pop-up font list. FontCard always takes me to the top of the font list,
where a bunch of Apple Asian fonts starting with # reside.

Now, with FontCard, if the selected text is Zurich, I have to scroll through
the entire font menu from # to A to Z to to choose another variation of
Zurich.

Typing in a font name in the font field no longer works efficiently because
of this problem. Without FontCard, you can type in 'Garamond', open the
pop-up list and you're right in your Garamond variations.

This problem is arguably worse than having to scroll through an unsorted
font list.

Judy Arndt


Wes Rand wrote:

> Rich Hudgins wrote:

>> Are you both talking about 1.0.3 as the latest version? It was released
>> on the 11th, and Wes is saying two days ago on the 12th which would make
>> it the 10th and possibly 1.0.2. Just want to make sure you have the
>> latest.
>>
>> Rich
>>
>> Wes Rand wrote:
>>

>>> Aggggh! Burned again! I installed the new FontCard two days ago and
>>> today it stopped working. I've had horrible luck getting it to work
>>> consistently. Back to long font menus here again.

>
> Yeah, I saw the latest version posted on versiontracker.com and decided
> to give it another go.

[Brian Pylant]

> I am not fond of most Unsanity haxies because I don't think they add

> to over-all system stability

Well, they're not supposed to *add* stability, as long as they don't
*detract* from it...
8^)

Seriously, I absolutely could not live without FruitMenu. IMO it's the
most elegant solution of it's kind out there. (FWIW DragThing looks very
flexible, but I just don't care for having floating docks and/or
dockable toolbars all over the place - all I wanted was for Apple to
return the Apple menu to its previous operation, which FruitMenu
provides for and then some.)

Brian

[Brian Pylant]

> I attended

> MacWorld in SF in January and spoke with a MM rep. He said he knew it was a big
> deal

They ought to - this was discussed IN DEPTH in the beta.

[maxman23]

Judy, go to the FontCard Prefpane. Tell it to not display FontBook collections.
That's the first thing I did after using it for a few minutes, growing dismayed
by all that crap at the top of my font list. (:->)

However, you may still find this little utlility to be of dubious
benefit. I may have spoken too soon yesterday; I have had mysterious buggy
behaviour with FH today after several hours of heavy work. Once it was a
complete app freeze that I had to force-quit, and other times I've had display
glitches, spinning beachballs after text edits, and weird text string hehaviour
- scrunched text, improperly reflowing test, etc

I think it may be time to scrap FontCard after all... (:->/

Rich: appreciate the tongue-in-cheek crack about system stability. (;->)

If ever Macromedia wanted to get in my good books, they'd release an upgrade
to FH that, if it did nothing else, addressed the font family issue... to not
have it as a feature in an app which purports to be a contemporary design tool
is outrageous IMHO

[papacino]

I have been using FreeHand MX for just under a week now after upgrading from 9
and the lack of font grouping is my one major problem with the program. I can
understand how the adobe apps handle this so easily as they have the access to
all that Type Reunion knowledge , but other apps I use such as Quark and
Softpress Freeway don't have a problem grouping fonts

Macromedia need to sort this out soon

[Herbie03]

This is an email and response I sent to Unsanity about FontCard and FH MX...

>Hello,

>I am concerned about a small issue with FontCard 1.0.3 and Macromedia

>Freehand MXa (11.01)

>My setup: Dual 1ghz Mac: OS 10.3.2
>I use only Adobe PS Type 1 fonts.

>Problem: In Freehand MXa, FontCard works except it does not select

>the correct "type style" from

>the font menu. e.g., if I want Caslon Bold Italic, I select it, but

>the font I get is Caslon Regular. I then have

>to change the style to "BoldItalic" in either the pull down menu or

>the floating pallet.

>In my experience this is not choosing the correct font, but forcing

>the "regular" face to be "BoldItalic".

>This could lead to problems at the RIP (raster image processor).

>Thanks,

>Glen Herbel

>Registered Owner

RESPONSE:

Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 19:40:25 +0000
From: j - Unsanity <unsanity@unsanity.com> Subject: Re: FontCard 1.0.3 and
Freehand MXa [UN:3ES7UDKCHF] To: [email]glenherbel@mac.com[/email]
X-Priority: 0
X-ETC-Tag: Array
Original-recipient: rfc822;glenherbel@mac.com

Glen Herbel,



Thanks for bringing this to our attention --having worked in a graphic design
firm for a time, I have to agree with your issues. I have filed a report with
our programmers to take a look at the issue. It should be resolved in upcoming
releases of the product.



Keep up the great support of our products!
Sincerely,

J Maxfield

Unsanity



:: [email]unsanity@unsanity.com[/email]

:: [url]www.unsanity.com[/url] / [url]www.haxies.com[/url] / [url]www.unsanity.org[/url]

[Wes Rand]

Herbie03 wrote:

> This is an email and response I sent to Unsanity about FontCard and FH MX...

> >Hello,

>

Wow! How do you rate? I spent several weeks trying to get a response
from Unsanity last year and received one short e-mail reply.