Back in the good old days when Stephen Jobs had more money in the bank than William Gates, real Mac users moved their typefaces around with an application called Font/DA mover. This was a particularly unintuitive piece of software with a nasty habit of creating font clashes and more hassles than it solved. In response, Extensions such as Suitcase and Masterjuggler were developed to replace Font/DA mover and to make typeface management less of a chore.
For many years these two ruled the roost even after Apple changed the way fonts are handled in System 7 and made it easier to overload a System with hundreds of fonts. A problem with Suitcase and Masterjuggler is that they are small, low cost pieces of software that earn only small sums for their publishers. Consequently they have remained largely as they were when first issued bar a few upgrades for System compatibility. They also suffer from being geared to managing suitcases rather than type libraries and for being Extensions rather than applications – with the resulting potential for conflicts. Then along came Font Reserve.
Font Reserve is an application rather than an Extension and has an unique document-centric approach to font management. It creates a database of available fonts and makes it easy to view, activate and control typefaces. There is no need to close most applications to make fonts available, it is easy to export fonts for delivery to a service bureau and the same fonts can be shared across an entire work group. Because Font Reserve is an application rather than an Extension it can be used even if a computer is started with extensions off. It uses Apple Events messages for communication with the database.
The way Font Reserve works is tocompile fonts into a catalogue database. The catalogue gives pointers to fonts in Font Reserve's vault and any contained on other hard drives, CD-ROMs, or
networked drives. The Font Reserve catalogue is managed by the Font Reserve Browser that does the sorting, previewing, and font management. It also includes a set of templates that create printed catalogues of some, or all the fonts.
When first installed Font Reserve’s database is created by locating all the fonts to manage. At the same time Font Reserve checks the fonts for corruption, it prevents addition of duplicate
fonts, matches the bitmap and outline components of PostScript fonts, finds any orphaned bitmaps or outline fonts and organises all the fonts. Once the fonts are in the database, any corrupt or
orphaned fonts can be deleted, new fonts can be added to the database for a single or permanent use.
Being a database Font Reserve has extensive sorting options – it is surprising to see the information contained within the individual fonts including family, suitcase, copyright name, designer, foundry, etc. Each of these can be used to sort and find fonts by using user-defined filters. For example, you might create a filter to locate all the Postscript or Truetype ornamental fonts from a specific foundry or designer. Font Reserve also seems to use its own algorithms to apply labels to fonts that may lack a piece of information. This can lead to problems if it classes a slab serifed font as a script for example but is easily corrected.
Fonts can be found by their look rather than name because they can be previewed before being opened. This is particularly useful for display faces whose names often have little bearing to their look, or for selecting faces for specific tasks. Fonts can be grouped into sets, as in the same style as Suitcase and Masterjuggler. Once fonts are in a set, they can be activated simultaneously, copied as a set to a back-up disk, or exported for a service bureau. Some of this is unnecessary as applications such as Pre-Flight and Flight Check duplicate the role plus check out the document containing the fonts. The real strength of Font Reserve is that it automatically opens and closes fonts as they are needed. This is ideal for a service bureau who may already have the fonts contained in the document they receive. Font Reserve can open temporarily the client’s fonts accompanying the document and then pick which ever version is the best, either the bureau’s or the client’s.
The application called Font Reserve is controlled via a further application that functions as if a control panel. In reality it is only an alias residing in the Control Panel folder, placed there for convenience. Other aliases to further parts of Font Reserve application suite can be stored (or not) in convenient places allowing one to enable and disable the database, automatically activate fonts used in documents, change the memory partition, and manage the Font Reserve Database folder. An alias in the Start Up Items folder runs Font Reserve at start up though it can be run just as easily after the Mac has started.
Since Font Reserve uses Apple Events messages for communication with the database,
the software has specific system requirements and this may be the only drawback for low end Macs. You can use Font Reserve with any Macintosh or Power Macintosh computer running Mac OS System 7.5 or greater up to and including 8.6 as long as you have enough RAM. Default settings are 6 or 7 megabytes, a lot to lose if Ram is in short supply. On the other hand, Font Reserve runs trouble-free under Virtual Ram, with a consequent lowering of the Ram required.
According to its 188 page pdf manual, Font Reserve 2.0 supports WorldScript: It will run with any language version of Mac OS or any Mac OS with a language kit installed. Font Reserve supports the appropriate default font for the language and renders type correctly (for example, Hebrew text is rendered from right to left).
The conclusion has to be that Font Reserve is stable, well thought-out and a boon to Mac users who manage typeface libraries or take in files from third parties. In use it is easy to operate without reading the manual, Balloon Help is fully implemented and in a new way – Apple please note. Clicking on the help icon next to a dialogue box brings up Balloon Help for as long as the mouse button is held down. A limited but fully working copy of Font Reserve is available for download from http://www.fontreserve.com or on various magazine cover CD’s.
Images:
1st picture Font Reserve's ‘control panel’ front end
2nd picture part of Font Reserve Application showing the opened preview window
