The third pane displays font previews that you can cycle through and compare. The first two panes are almost identical – both can list fonts grouped by library or by set, optionally grouping fonts into families – but the first can also list all fonts alphabetically. The FontAgent Pro window consists of three panes. Sets can be nested, and a font can be a member of more than one set. A set is a purely conceptual grouping, clumping together some of a library’s fonts, and is basically just a way to activate or deactivate multiple fonts simultaneously. A library is basically a physical folder on disk where FontAgent Pro has collected fonts. (This architecture is similar to Font Reserve, where Font Reserve itself is invisible, and the Browser is its visible face.)įontAgent Pro thinks in terms of libraries and sets. FontAgent Pro is thus essentially just a window for telling FontAgent Activator what to do your fonts are still managed even if you quit FontAgent Pro. How It Looks - When you use FontAgent Pro, fonts are activated by an invisible background application, FontAgent Activator. In general, FontAgent Pro appears simple and dependable. It can manage installed fonts (except for /System/Library/Fonts, which it leaves alone), and it can install a startup item so that your chosen fonts will be activated the next time you restart, but these are preferences under your control. But the current version, FontAgent Pro 2.1, is much more user-compliant. I had tried out an earlier version of this program, but shied away because I found it too intrusive: the installer demanded my password, which I found suspicious it wanted to take control of my already installed fonts and when it imported fonts, it reported having performed hundreds of 'repairs' to them, without asking my permission and without explaining just what it had done. Recently, however, I’ve put a tentative toe back into the font management waters by taking a look at FontAgent Pro, from Insider Software. So, since the advent of Panther, I’ve kept my font management minimal, using Apple’s own Font Book as described in my ebook 'Take Control of Customizing Panther.' Also, by that time, Extensis had acquired Font Reserve, ending the healthy competition between the two, and the steam seemed to go out of the development on both products. I then tried Extensis’s Suitcase and stayed with it happily for a year or so, but eventually it broke against Panther, and although a revised version was issued, I found it sluggish and undependable. For many years I was strongly attached to DiamondSoft’s Font Reserve, but it foundered somewhat on the breakers of Mac OS X initially it didn’t support many Mac OS X fonts, and Classic activation was never reliable. In past TidBITS articles, I’ve talked about what a problem font management on the Macintosh has always been, and what steps I’ve taken to alleviate it on my own machine.

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Fontagent pro sync not loading new font