Font Book Question- Using 2,000 Fonts

Can't answer your query since I only have a hundred or so fonts. However, a perusal of Font Management in OS X should point you in the right direction.

Personally, I prescribe to, "The less fonts open, the better." But to answer your questions based on how you'd like to use your Mac:

Is it a bad thing to have so many fonts enabled at one time?

The only bad things that can happen is if you're low on RAM, more active fonts leave less room for application data, which will slow the system down. Or fonts that are damaged, which can cause memory leaks into adjacent RAM it isn't supposed to touch.

Will it slow down the performance of my new MacBook Pro (10.6.3- 2.66GHz)?

2,000 is a pretty large number of fonts to have open at once, but not enormous. As long as you're comfortable with the performance of your Mac, consider it okay.

Mess with the memory?

Only if they're actually corrupt.

Just wondering if it's OK to leave all the font enabled all the time, or only when you're using them?

Fewer open fonts means more RAM available for other tasks. But as long as you're happy with your computer's current performance, don't worry about leaving them open.

Now that the font maestro's aboard, I'll bid you adieu. Good luck.

I have a different (but related) problem. I've turned off a whole bunch of fonts in Font Book so that I keep the fonts that have to load to a minimum, but iWork ignores this and loads them all anyway.

What's with that?

but iWork ignores this and loads them all anyway.

Is this true? In the /Library/Application Support/Apple/Fonts/iWork/ folder, you will find 25 .dfonts, which comprise a total of 37 individual type faces. Is that how many you're seeing in iWork, regardless of what Font Book says?

If so, it's likely that iWork is using the fonts in that location on its own. Quit iWork and move those fonts to another location (not into a Fonts folder). Launch iWork again and they should be unavailable.

Kurt Lang wrote:
Personally, I prescribe to, "The less fonts open, the better." But to answer your questions based on how you'd like to use your Mac:

Is it a bad thing to have so many fonts enabled at one time?

The only bad things that can happen is if you're low on RAM, more active fonts leave less room for application data, which will slow the system down. Or fonts that are damaged, which can cause memory leaks into adjacent RAM it isn't supposed to touch.

Will it slow down the performance of my new MacBook Pro (10.6.3- 2.66GHz)?

2,000 is a pretty large number of fonts to have open at once, but not enormous. As long as you're comfortable with the performance of your Mac, consider it okay.

Mess with the memory?

Only if they're actually corrupt.

Just wondering if it's OK to leave all the font enabled all the time, or only when you're using them?

Fewer open fonts means more RAM available for other tasks. But as long as you're happy with your computer's current performance, don't worry about leaving them open.

Hi Kurt...would you say that Font Book is now capable...I mean a few years ago, when I was using 10.3 the advice was to use third party software like Linotype or Suitcase if you were a designer and needed lots of fonts available all the time...I have happily been using FontExplorer X with OS 10.5, the free version, but it's not available for 10.6...and it was you who helped me back then to make sense of all the font confusion...helvetica for the system, for print, etc...so thanks for that again...

would you say that Font Book is now capable

My personal opinion, no. It is a light use Font Manager for the typical home user. Its database is still easily damaged by bad fonts. As soon as that happens, you can't open fonts, close fonts that are open, active fonts show up in some applications but not others, etc. The only fix is to do a Safe Mode boot to clear the current FB database, which also removes all of your sets.

As a designer or someone in prepress where you are constantly turning fonts on and off, be happy about spending a few bucks on a font manager that works.

thanks Kurt...will check out the new FontExplorer X trial and also Suitcase Fusion 3...only a $20 diffference so I figure I'll see if I like one more than the other...been using the free FontExplorer and it works pretty good till now so I'm inclined to stick with it...

adios...

I'm late to the party but have had similar problems and want to comment. I got rid of Fontbook and purchased Fontexplorer Pro to deal with my 2000+ fonts. What helped most -- verified by now very rapid loading times for Word and other memory hog apps -- was using Fontexplorer to clean my system fonts folder, then reinstalling the stuff from Microsoft and Adobe. Fontexplorer nicely organizes this in a new and separate folder on the desktop, letting you pick what you want to put back in after cleaning. VERY cool. Yes, I gave up some of my old fonts which I probably acquired ten years ago from dubious sources anyway, but now the system runs fast, and smooth as silk. I might have been able to get all of this done with Fontbook, but I found the investment in Fontexplorer well worth it. I have no financial ties to any of these people, am just a country doctor who loves Macs.

I also use FontExplorer X Pro with 15,000+fonts. Been picking up fonts with programs and buying collections since 1984. Just can't pass up a good font. This started with GraphicWriter all the way to Illustrator. I have them arranged within FE in multiple font folders sorted by appearance, products (like Office), and of course, system. I use the autoactivate feature that turns on fonts needed by application or document.
Great program and heartily recommend it.