Startup time is too long

[RoverWorks]

Hello there...

First of all I'd like to say that Affinity Designer is a very pleasant and easy software to use. Thank you for your contributions to creativity!

This is my complaint and suggestion:

It takes way too long to start up. After I start up Designer, it typically takes about 6 to 8 minutes for the program to start and finally loaded to be used.

However, I think this might have to do with the fact that I have over 8,000 fonts on my computer....but here's the thing - some of us are designers (get the joke?), and it is VERY reasonable to have up to 8000 fonts on your computer.

To be honest, I signed up to this forum, confirmed my email address, and started writing this post, and Designer has not even finished loading.

My computer has a quad-core Intel i7 processor, and 16GB of RAM and over 500GB free diskpace, running Windows 10. Also I usually have very few programs (light on resources) running at once.

My suggestion:
It is probably a bad idea for Designer to scan and record ALL the fonts on a system before the program is use-able.
I might suggest even building the fonts database progressively, even after the program has started. Its possible to start the program with only 'Favourites' fonts loaded at the start, and then progressively adding fonts in batches. Just to keep loading and start time to a minimum.

I know there are designers who have over 12k fonts on their computers. Would they have to wait 9 minutes before they can use Designer? I feel there is some merit to this idea about progressivly scanning and adding fonts (I do a humble amount of coding myself).

To support my point, I am sure that over half every single use of Affinity Designer does not involve text or fonts within the first few minutes.They are probably first working with shapes, lines, color, etc.

Please try to fix this issue. With all politeness, it is unacceptable for a program to take 5 to 8 minutes to start. By that time, its easy to even lose any motivation or creative ideas you might have wanted to create. 

Thank you very much.

[G13RL]

Hello, RoverWorks,

Apparently you don't use a font manager and 8000 fonts loaded all the time is certainly too much.
At one time I had almost 9000 fonts on my machine and it took at least 5 minutes to start up.
Now I have almost 20,000 fonts on my machine of which only 444 are activated, the start-up takes 9 seconds.
The font manager allows me to view all the fonts on the computer and to immediately install or temporarily load the fonts I want to use.

[RoverWorks]

Thanks for your input....Is there a free font manager you'd recommend? 

[G13RL]

I did not use a free manager so I won't allow myself to give an advice on this subject, you will certainly get answers from members who use them.
You can already do a search on the internet on the fonts managers compatible with your OS.

[dominik]

9 hours ago, RoverWorks said:

...Is there a free font manager you'd recommend? 

Hi @RoverWorks,

you might want to look into these:

https://fontba.se/ Font Base (has some additional commercial features but the main application is free)
http://www.xiles.net/ Nexus Font is free but Windows only.

Cheers,
d.