Confessions of a font hoarder. I need help.

[Alfred]

On 9/19/2023 at 1:41 AM, Sulaiman_ said:

i still have problems of loading fonts in affinity V2 ipad,
it's so slow and laggy,
are you guys have the same problems..?

I have an iPad Air 2 (so not exactly top of the range!) and I have several hundred fonts installed. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any problems with font loading in any of the Affinity apps.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

I have an iPad Air 2 (so not exactly top of the range!) and I have several hundred fonts installed. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any problems with font loading in any of the Affinity apps.

I've seen reports from several users of performance issues with 2.2.0 on iPadOS 17, with many (perhaps > 80) fonts installed.

[Alfred]

21 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I've seen reports from several users of performance issues with 2.2.0 on iPadOS 17, with many (perhaps > 80) fonts installed.

There were clearly some major problems in early releases of iPadOS 17 beta, but I haven’t read anything about whether they were resolved or not. I’ve only recently upgraded to the latest release of iPadOS 15, so those issues haven’t affected me.

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Alfred said:

There were clearly some major problems in early releases of iPadOS 17 beta, but I haven’t read anything about whether they were resolved or not. I’ve only recently upgraded to the latest release of iPadOS 15, so those issues haven’t affected me.

These were reports in the past few days, here in the forums, since 17 became officially available.

[loukash]

On 9/2/2023 at 7:29 PM, angier said:

If you are a font hoarder, please commit below so I don't feel ashamed and alone here. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Oh, I used to be one, since the early 1990s – we're talking Mac OS System 7 here! – until about 10 years ago. Eventually I realized that it would just never stop. (Much like I realized at that time that hoarding vinyl records while not actively deejaying anymore doesn't make much sense either, and so I stopped as well .) I still have folders with hundreds of fonts that I'd like to sort and categorize since at least 20 years, but I was never bored enough to plunge into it. Also because the best offline font manager app out there, FontExplorer X, is sadly no more, although the last free v4 still runs on my El Capitan Macs.

On 9/6/2023 at 10:35 PM, dcr said:

For Mac users, I'll second Typeface

Looks very interesting. Especially this part: typefaceapp.com/help/articles/migrate/fontexplorer

For now I'm using the free version of FontBase on Catalina and Ventura. It works actually pretty well if you have your fonts already somewhat organized in Finder folders; you can then catalog those folders individually. Then, to activate fonts, FontBase uses a pretty simple trick by copying the activated fonts into your ~/Library/Fonts/FontBase folder. Clever!

On 9/8/2023 at 4:10 PM, Old Bruce said:

I don't know why we cannot access the font collections from Font Book in the Context toolbar but we can access then in the Text Styles and Character Panels.

Yep, I don't understand it either. Has someone filed a feature request yet?
At least, Affinity font favorites are now being synced accross all three apps with v2.2. That's a bit of a progress.

[angier]

Loukash, thank you for your confession about your past font life. You're so right, discovering new fonts you think might work in a project never stops. I so wish Affinity would add a font organizer to their line of programs. They are putting so much work into Af. Publisher, having a complimentary font organizer would make the software even more desirable to a lot of people and companies.

[Return]

https://en.eagle.cool/article/271-tutorial-5-browsing-videos-gifs-audios-files-and-fonts?categoryId=142-category
Also great for so many other formats including the af~files
Both mac and windows

[loukash]

40 minutes ago, Return said:

Also great for so many other formats including the af~file

You've been posting about Eagle quite a few times here already, so I just had a closer look at its features and concept. While it actually looks like a very promising DAM on the surface, this makes it a no-go for me: docs-en.eagle.cool/article/480-what-is-the-library?categoryId=155-category

Quote

All the images added to Eagle will be placed in the "Library". 

So if I understand it correctly, Eagle will also create duplicates of fonts – or any other file format for that matter – in its library packages, right?

[Return]

@loukash 
I also thought it would be dumb to use copies of the actual file but it isn't a closed format just a copy of the actual file with a json file + thumbnail in a single folder that one also can reach from finder or explorer or open from within the app.
Just backup the originals on a external storage and use the duplicates for working projects.
Maybe try it out if it suits your needs, it also does work with audio files 😉
 

[loukash]

42 minutes ago, Return said:

it isn't a closed format just a copy of the actual file with a json file + thumbnail in a single folder that one also can reach from finder

I'm aware of that.
I'm using quite a few apps that make use of such annoying document package formats. Often I can work around it via symbolic links, for example when using DSP-Quattro for creating DDP masters for audio CDs.

42 minutes ago, Return said:

Just backup the originals on a external storage and use the duplicates for working projects.

That may work well for a relative novice.
But it's a p.i.t.a. for someone with over 30 years worth of digital archives in a painstakingly maintained Finder hierarchy and structure. We're talking about at least 150 GB worth of documents: layouts, images, photos, you name it. No way I'm gonna move them into an app's "library" package. Apple's Photo.app is already annoying enough in that regard, but at least you can optionally catalog photos without copying them into the library as long as you don't need to sync them via iCloud.

In other words, all I want is a successor to iView/Expression Multimedia – that also did catalog fonts, by the way, although I've never used it as a font cataloger except for a few custom fonts that I've created for clients and thus they ended up in my respective clients' iView catalogs.
I.e., I want to take care of my folder structure myself, because I know precisely what I'm doing. Then I only want the DAM to catalog the files or folders that I tell it to watch, and save just the paths and metadata into its catalog file. Great thing about iView: it doesn't write metadata unless you tell to. Another great thing about iView: AppleScript-able! Its concept was almost perfect for what I've always needed.

NeoFinder is already half way there. But being a DAM never was its primary task, so it will likely never get "there" in full. Yes, I've requested quite a few of such more advanced DAM features already years ago, but they still weren't fully implemented to this day. (Some other CDFinder/NeoFinder features are based on my feature requests, for example the "Support PathFinder" preference check box was my idea… )

And Eagle is in fact already almost there, if it weren't for this library packages requirement. For me that's a 100% dealbreaker. Save the metadata and thumbnails to catalogs but leave my files alone, thankyouverymuch!  

Edited September 27, 2023 by loukash

[Archangel]

On 9/6/2023 at 1:41 PM, angier said:

Kenmcd,

Thank you. I've worked with MainType but it felt messy. I'll download Proxima today. The program looks like it's going to be perfect to work with.

And y'all I promise I'm not crazy!

It looks like the old Serif Font Manager which I believe was based upon an earlier version of the software. I had version X3.

I found that version to be quite buggy.