Takes minutes to boot

[firewater]

Both Photo and Designer take at least 3 minutes to load up. The reason is that I have hundreds of fonts installed, and no SSD. Nevertheless, I believe it should do a better job, as a lot of other software like MS Paint don't collapse because I have so many fonts.

It's really frustrating.

[A_B_C]

How do you know that the reason is these hundreds of fonts? Do the Affinity apps boot faster when you disable fonts or remove them from the system? … 

 

Well, you could try to reset the app, but the procedure seems different for the Mac and the Windows versions. So you would have to provide more information on your system. 

 

Cheers, Alex

[Mithferion]

The fact that the number of fonts affects the startup time of Affinity Apps has been said by the Devs here in the forum.

But for the to last minutes... that must be an insane amount of them.

Best regards!

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, A_B_C said:

Do the Affinity apps boot faster when you disable fonts or remove them from the system?

 

 

[Alfred]

15 hours ago, firewater said:

I have hundreds of fonts installed

 

If you have more than a few hundred fonts that you use regularly, install and run a font manager so that you can keep the number of permanently installed fonts to a minimum, with the others being loaded (i.e. installed temporarily) as and when you need them. The Affinity apps automatically update the font cache when you load/install or unload/uninstall any fonts.

 

[A_B_C]

Thanks, Mithferion and Pšenda, I must have missed this. 

[Pšenda]

The question is, if loading hundreds of fonts is really necessary, when I just want to draw only shapes.

Why do not they load in the background after the start?

[A_B_C]

(Maybe because the app doesn’t know beforehand what you intend to do? Some users might want to work with fonts right from the start.)

[Pšenda]

Yes, but it is known by choice Text tool.

But the application must boot up, user must select or create a new project, and only then can he want to work with the fonts, that could be uploaded in the meantime.

[Celia at Grafted Works]

On 12/14/2017 at 5:08 AM, Alfred said:

 

If you have more than a few hundred fonts that you use regularly, install and run a font manager so that you can keep the number of permanently installed fonts to a minimum, with the others being loaded (i.e. installed temporarily) as and when you need them. The Affinity apps automatically update the font cache when you load/install or unload/uninstall any fonts.

 

 

Which font managers do people recommend? I need to get my precious collection under control for this same reason.

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, Cealcrest said:

 

Which font managers do people recommend? I need to get my precious collection under control for this same reason.

 

I like and use MainType from High-Logic, but it's currently only available for Windows. 

[keerah]

I do not have thousands of fonts and I have SSD, but both program's start is really slow

[firewater]

On 12/14/2017 at 4:29 AM, A_B_C said:

How do you know that the reason is these hundreds of fonts? Do the Affinity apps boot faster when you disable fonts or remove them from the system? … 

 

Well, you could try to reset the app, but the procedure seems different for the Mac and the Windows versions. So you would have to provide more information on your system. 

 

Cheers, Alex

I know for sure because it loaded up fine right before I imported my font collection into my computer.

On 12/14/2017 at 7:01 AM, Mithferion said:

The fact that the number of fonts affects the startup time of Affinity Apps has been said by the Devs here in the forum.

But for the to last minutes... that must be an insane amount of them.

Best regards!

It is a lot of fonts, but if any type of person is gonna have a lot of fonts in his computer, it's gonna be the type of person who uses Affinity. So I believe they should do a better job at this.

On 12/14/2017 at 9:08 AM, Alfred said:

 

If you have more than a few hundred fonts that you use regularly, install and run a font manager so that you can keep the number of permanently installed fonts to a minimum, with the others being loaded (i.e. installed temporarily) as and when you need them. The Affinity apps automatically update the font cache when you load/install or unload/uninstall any fonts.

 

What would be the use of such a program? I'm not familiar with them. I take it I'd have to remove many fonts, therefore I wouldn't be able to test them from Affinity on my designs, right?

On 12/14/2017 at 11:30 AM, Pšenda said:

The question is, if loading hundreds of fonts is really necessary, when I just want to draw only shapes.

Why do not they load in the background after the start?

I so profoundly agree with this. Fonts should be loaded when called for, or slowly in the background.

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, firewater said:

On 14/12/2017 at 1:08 PM, Alfred said:

 

If you have more than a few hundred fonts that you use regularly, install and run a font manager so that you can keep the number of permanently installed fonts to a minimum, with the others being loaded (i.e. installed temporarily) as and when you need them. The Affinity apps automatically update the font cache when you load/install or unload/uninstall any fonts.

 

What would be the use of such a program? I'm not familiar with them. I take it I'd have to remove many fonts, therefore I wouldn't be able to test them from Affinity on my designs, right?

 

When you're using a font manager, you uninstall most of your fonts rather than removing them completely. When you want to use a font which is present on your machine but is not currently installed, you load it via the font manager and it then becomes available for use in any Windows application. Many programs won't 'see' the font until you close the program and reopen it, but the Affinity apps can use newly loaded/installed fonts in any new or reopened document without the need to relaunch the app itself.

 

[carl123]

6 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

When you want to use a font which is present on your machine but is not currently installed, you load it via the font manager and it then becomes available for use in any Windows application.

 

Are these uninstalled fonts visible to the Affinity Apps with some sort of marker to say they are uninstalled or do you have to remember what fonts you have uninstalled?

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Are these uninstalled fonts visible to the Affinity Apps with some sort of marker to say they are uninstalled or do you have to remember what fonts you have uninstalled?

 

As far as the Affinity apps (and any other programs on the same machine) are concerned, the uninstalled fonts might as well not exist. However, since an Affinity app's font cache is updated when it detects a change, you can immediately use the newly loaded fonts in a new or reopened document.

 

Unavailable fonts are listed in a pop-up when you open the document, but they might not all be listed if there are too many of them, and there's currently no way to view the list again without closing and reopening the document.

 

[carl123]

Thanks, no good to me then, there is no way I could remember what fonts I have uninstalled, whilst in Affinity and scrolling through my available fonts.

Someone needs to design a font manager where all fonts are shown in the application you are using whether they are installed or not and if you click to use an uninstalled one the program immediately loads it so it is available to use from them on.

That way I could uninstall all my fonts downloaded over the years and start again from scratch thereby only adding fonts I actually use now to my system

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, carl123 said:

there is no way I could remember what fonts I have uninstalled, whilst in Affinity and scrolling through my available fonts

 

As I see it, all we really need is a resource manager like the one in PagePlus.

[MEB]

27 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Are these uninstalled fonts visible to the Affinity Apps with some sort of marker to say they are uninstalled or do you have to remember what fonts you have uninstalled?

 

Hi carl123,

Affinity apps don't make any distinction between fonts that are not present on the system and ones that are simply deactivated. That's where font managers come in. Depending on how well font managers are integrated with the system (and the OS) they may or may not manage this for you. For example FontExplorer X Pro activates missing fonts automatically when you open a document with missing fonts in Affinity Apps (on the Mac) as long as theses fonts are installed and managed by FontExplorer. 

[carl123]

Hi MEB

That sounds worth looking into.

 I'm on Windows though so will have to find something that integrates well with the Affinity apps and is Windows based

[v_kyr]

7 minutes ago, carl123 said:

 I'm on Windows though so will have to find something that integrates well with the Affinity apps and is Windows based

On Win you can give the free Nexus Font a try. - Another one (multiplatform) is FontBase though I've never tried that one so far.

[MEB]

FontExplorer is also available for Windows but i don't know how well it's integrated there. Here's a screenshot of the Font Requests interception options on the Mac version so you can have an idea (for Affinity/generic apps). It also includes specific plugins for all Adobe apps and QuarkXPress which should be used instead of the generic options displayed below when available.