Typophile

Probably gonna write a font manager for Windows...

IanT

...because I am fed up with there not being anything decent available for finding/classifying

was thinking of a tag based system of classification, e.g. a font could be tagged

“sans-serif 1970s funky curly bold narrow bodytext” or anything you like just to make things easier to find.

the power would be in people sharing their databases online - export to a text file and stick it online so others can merge with their own databases. Of course some agreement would need to be reached over generic tags but really anything is better than nothing.

this would be free (and probably open source later)

comments?

‹ please help with what font this is? Looking for Berlin design agencies ›
Reed Reibstein

If your idea includes a nice, thoughtful preview pane and activation, I am already drooling at the thought. We poor Windows users are rather out of luck as you said.

I currently use Extensis Suitcase for Windows, which is leaps and bounds better than my previous program, MainType. But Suitcase, though functional, does seem rather barebones, especially in being locked into the folder methodology rather than the more metadata-style approach you are using.

You probably have already seen it many times, but MyFonts has what seems to be the best tagging system out there, though with so many typefaces available, it can be hard to find something really suitable for a query. You might want to contact Nick Sherman from MyFonts; he’s done some work trying to figure out how to organize and classify type, which you can get an overview of over at his site.

And if, far down the line, you want anyone to test the software, look me up
:-)

Hallock

How will this be different from Linotype Font Explorer?

IanT

@auricfuzz
A ’thoughtful’ preview pane? please expand on that!

but yes, something along the lines of extensis suitcase (but with more functionality in the classification/grouping/searching) is probably on the cards. (though the auto activation plugin stuff might be beyond the time i have available. for me just a decent categorisation would be beneficial)

“activation” is easy it seems having a look at the APIs. weirdly enough there is no functions for determining font names from a file and that’s going to have to be hard coded, reading the file format.

@Hallock

>How will this be different from Linotype Font Explorer?

i won’t delete the software from the net :) I’ve not tried it as they pulled it. No dates, no real indication that they are carrying on with it, let alone a projected release date. Seriously if me just hacking something together forces the hands of one or more other developers then hooray. i just can’t take looking through loads of fonts or having to manually stick things in groups anymore. this kind of software is not rocket science.

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