best font application?

Hi madaneerg,

Not disagreeing with Benny in particular, but Font Book is about the weakest font manager around for Mac. The top choices are FontExplorer X, Suitcase Fusion and Font Agent Pro.

Of these, Suitcase Fusion is very stable and has been around for the Mac for quite some time. Font Agent Pro also gets very good marks. Both are around $100 and can be downloaded and used for a trial period before buying. LinoType's FontExplorer X is free. Don't let that put you off. I just tested the new 1.1 version and it is an exceptional program, and not just because it's free. Suitcase has a bit of an edge in the cost software as it comes with a bundled copy of Font Doctor.

Why bother with paid programs when you can get a free FontExplorerX from Linotype?

Depends on what you do for a living.

One other thing about Suitcase. This may not matter to a lot of people, but the main reason Extensis bought out Diamond Soft's Font Reserve was to get their hands on Font Reserve's "Font Sense" technology. This virtually ensures that the font used in a document is the one that will be opened during auto activation. If it can't find the proper font, it will let you know.

This is huge in prepress and publication. There are so many versions of Helvetica, Times New Roman and such around. Both those by various type houses who give them the same name and those modified by advertising agencies and designers. I've seen a couple of printed jobs refused by the client because the kerning was off by a molecule due to the incorrect version of a font being used.

This is something I would bet FontExplorer X can't do. As long as Times (example) is open, it would be happy. Quark, InDesign, or whichever program would also be happy if that's the font name it's looking for. But, if it's a different version, or a modified font, you could be in deep doo doo.

I can't think of any professional shop around here that doesn't use Suitcase. It's ability to use the correct font every time, or at least warn you it's not available, is reason enough for me to use nothing else.

Mac OS X comes with a perfect font management application. It's called Font Book and it's located in your Applications folder. You can add new fonts and management, put them in groups and it works really well in organization of fonts.
Remember to mark as helpful or solved.

You are right, Suitcase is the software of choice among prepress pros, but the question asked was too vague in description, and I automatically assumed that FontExplorerX would be the best solution, as the pros usually know what they should be using.

Why bother with paid programs when you can get a free FontExplorerX from Linotype -the font Gods 🙂 (http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX).

Oh, I do agree with you in that respect, Aleh. FontExplorer X is a great choice for those without such detailed needs.