ianrobertdouglas Posted February 24, 2016 Share Posted February 24, 2016 I have FontExplorer X Pro (v5.0.2) set up to activate on launching AD a set of fonts. The problem is that AD is much faster at starting up than FontExplorer is at activating the font set. I know in Preferences / Miscellaneous there is the useful Reset Fonts button. After pressing it (once FontExplorer has activated my set), all my fonts appear as available. But I was wondering is there was a way to make a shortcut command of this function, or (better yet) a way of scripting it, so, for example, I could use Alfred to open AD and automatically run a script after a defined wait period to reset AD's fonts. In essence, I'm trying to find a better way of dealing with FontExplorer's sluggish activation, so I don't have to open Preferences and find the Reset Fonts button every time I open AD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Leigh Posted February 24, 2016 Staff Share Posted February 24, 2016 There's no way to automate this within app but you could use Apple Script editor to create a simple app that launches FontExplorer first and then opens AD several seconds later. Something like this: activate application "FontExplorer X Pro" delay 5 activate application "Affinity Designer" ianrobertdouglas 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted February 24, 2016 Author Share Posted February 24, 2016 Thank you, Leigh. It's resetting the fonts that I'm not sure how to script, in part because it's not available as a shortcut. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted February 24, 2016 Author Share Posted February 24, 2016 In case this is of interest to anyone else, this great little tool allows the scripting of mouse clicks: http://www.bluem.net/en/mac/cliclick/. Not sure if I'll be able to get it to play with AD, but if I do I'll report back. Still would be neat to have the option of shortcoding this function in AD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted February 25, 2016 Author Share Posted February 25, 2016 Not sure if I'm allowed to post an Automator app here, or if it would be useful to anyone, but I managed to deploy Cliclick to resolve my problem and automate the launch of FontExplorer X Pro and AD in sequence, with delays included to allow the former to get up and running, then AD, then time for FontExplorer to activate my design fonts (1000+), then open a new file, and finally open the AD Preferences and click Reset Fonts and Close. The delays necessary in the sequence might vary according to other people's font number, as well as CPU/RAM, while the position of the cursor or mouse might vary according to people's screen resolution (you can get values for where the cursor is by using the Terminal command 'cliclick p' after you've installed Cliclick). My version of the script also runs a zsh shell, so the export path syntax may change for bash. Anyway, if it's useful, it's here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mwjm4c5xskn6tch/LaunchAffinity.app.zip?dl=0(2.1MB) Invoking the script/app from Alfred via keyword, I can now at a key stroke have fonts activated and ready to go in AD. Saves me having +1000 fonts active when I don't need them (i.e., when I'm not using AD), and makes activation seamless when I do. I got the whole process down to 25 seconds. That's mainly because FontExplorer is slow at activating a lot of fonts after AD starts up. Leigh 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Leigh Posted February 25, 2016 Staff Share Posted February 25, 2016 Nice work Ianrobertdouglas. Glad to hear you've found a solution! I'm sure this will be useful to other users in the future. Thanks for sharing :) ianrobertdouglas 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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