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Use font collections


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  • 1 month later...

This is something that should have existed since the dawn of time. Instead we need to juggle through hundred of useless fonts, some of them are not event supposed to be available to the user (hello Adobe and Microsoft) as those are used by the Apps UI.

Some sort of list to uncheck font familties and have them removed from the font menu.

Nice idea in my opninion.

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Yes Yes Yes.. but why not go a bit further?

 

Imagine you could create your own groups and organize fonts in them..

 

Google Web Fonts; Logos; Headings; Paragraphs; Favorite, Serif, Sans-serif, Textured etc....

 

This would be so great..

 

+1

web & graphic designer :: front-end web developer :: illustrator

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Yes Yes Yes.. but why not go a bit further?

 

Imagine you could create your own groups and organize fonts in them..

 

Google Web Fonts; Logos; Headings; Paragraphs; Favorite, Serif, Sans-serif, Textured etc....

 

This would be so great..

 

+1

 

Actually,  I think that by now this should be a global, system managed, standard feature in Mac OS X.

Count me in :)

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Actually,  I think that by now this should be a global, system managed, standard feature in Mac OS X.

Count me in :)

 

In the apps that support it and FontBook itself has had the ability to create custom font sets since, I believe, OS X 6 or thereabouts. I have sets set to contain Comic Dialog, Comic Sound FX, Display, Sans serif faves, serif faves, and so on. ComicLife 2 and now 3 calls up the Mac OS font thingamabob (at least that's how I think of it. Because, artist here) and the sets are there. so there has to be a way to incorporate these "sets" in a panel/dialog/whachamacallit for easy utilization by the user. This would be, imho, the best way since these sets would be system-wide and not change (or be dependent on memory to recreate each time) from app to app.

 

so +1 (conditionally on the above) for this.

Mac OS X Catinlina, 2014 iMac, 3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7, Huion Kamvas Pro 22 Graphic Tablet, 16GB RAM, MacOS10.12 || Magic keyboard w/numeric keypad, wireless trackpad, Kengsington Edge Trackball || Flux Capacitor in a secure location

---

I encourage kids to go ahead and play on my lawn. I mean, how else can I make sure the death-traps work?

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In the apps that support it and FontBook itself has had the ability to create custom font sets since, I believe, OS X 6 or thereabouts. I have sets set to contain Comic Dialog, Comic Sound FX, Display, Sans serif faves, serif faves, and so on. ComicLife 2 and now 3 calls up the Mac OS font thingamabob (at least that's how I think of it. Because, artist here) and the sets are there. so there has to be a way to incorporate these "sets" in a panel/dialog/whachamacallit for easy utilization by the user. This would be, imho, the best way since these sets would be system-wide and not change (or be dependent on memory to recreate each time) from app to app.

 

so +1 (conditionally on the above) for this.

 

Oh, that would be very nice indeed :) though I think that separated font sets by app is not something to dismis, but I admit that it may be be too much to ask. I'm thinking in the different scenarios or working in graphic design vs editorial/page layout vs web design, for example.

Overkill, anyone? XD

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Automatic font categorization would be excellent (a superfeature!). Possibly just for (1) serif, (2) sans, (3) script, (4) exotic. At least for Mac pre-installed fonts. 'Automatic' meaning the user wouldn't have to create the collections himself, one by one. But AD would take care of it itself.

 

Edit: I forgot, to have a slab category would be useful as well.

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Automatic font categorization would be excellent (a superfeature!). Possibly just for (1) serif, (2) sans, (3) script, (4) exotic. At least for Mac pre-installed fonts. 'Automatic' meaning the user wouldn't have to create the collections himself, one by one. But AD would take care of it itself.

 

I do prefer (a priori) having my own collections but could be an additional option.

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Automatic font categorization would be excellent (a superfeature!). Possibly just for (1) serif, (2) sans, (3) script, (4) exotic. At least for Mac pre-installed fonts. 'Automatic' meaning the user wouldn't have to create the collections himself, one by one. But AD would take care of it itself.

Just curious, how would the font categorization be done? Sometimes the categories aren't consistent from foundry to foundry. So using the meta data from the font itself could be problematic.

Mac OS X Catinlina, 2014 iMac, 3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7, Huion Kamvas Pro 22 Graphic Tablet, 16GB RAM, MacOS10.12 || Magic keyboard w/numeric keypad, wireless trackpad, Kengsington Edge Trackball || Flux Capacitor in a secure location

---

I encourage kids to go ahead and play on my lawn. I mean, how else can I make sure the death-traps work?

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Just curious, how would the font categorization be done? Sometimes the categories aren't consistent from foundry to foundry. So using the meta data from the font itself could be problematic.

Good point. If the metadata is really problematic, the automatic categorization would work for default fonts only. And perhaps for those fonts with no issues during AD's categorization process. For the rest there might be another category, for instance 'uncategorized'. When user opens AD after installing a new font, he is asked if he wants to manually categorize fonts which were not recognized.

 

I believe some order in list of fonts would really help designers be more effective and a bit more conscious when thinking about type.

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Good point. If the metadata is really problematic, the automatic categorization would work for default fonts only. And perhaps for those fonts with no issues during AD's categorization process. For the rest there might be another category, for instance 'uncategorized'. When user opens AD after installing a new font, he is asked if he wants to manually categorize fonts which were not recognized.

 

I believe some order in list of fonts would really help designers be more effective and a bit more conscious when thinking about type.

 

A real shame that font metadata is not used properly by foundries and neither by font managers. At least is what is seems. Maybe some sort of AI could be used to determine if there is serif, non serif, non straight... and so forth in the fonts to categorize them.

Or maybe a community maintained DB with font names associated to styles

Anyway, a killer feature in my opinion.

Cheers.

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Good point. If the metadata is really problematic, the automatic categorization would work for default fonts only. And perhaps for those fonts with no issues during AD's categorization process. For the rest there might be another category, for instance 'uncategorized'. When user opens AD after installing a new font, he is asked if he wants to manually categorize fonts which were not recognized.

 

I believe some order in list of fonts would really help designers be more effective and a bit more conscious when thinking about type.

While I do agree with you and what you've outlined. I cannot help but think that if AD could use the sets that can be created in FontBook (which I've seen other apps make use of, btw) it would eliminate a number of issues while giving the user a nice consistency between different apps.

 

Different sets in FontBook can reference the same fonts. For example, I have a set called Comic Dialog, which contains all the dialog fonts I use for comics. Then I have other sets, UC-LC dialog, which has only comic dialog fonts that use Upper and Lower case letters <-- and this set contains fonts that the basic Comic Dialog set has. So by using that info (or similar info from apps like, Suitcase fusion for example) when it comes to displaying fonts could be very helpful and save a bit of work on the user end. 

 

For me, any kind of automatic font assignment would, most likely, be customized ... a lot.

Mac OS X Catinlina, 2014 iMac, 3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7, Huion Kamvas Pro 22 Graphic Tablet, 16GB RAM, MacOS10.12 || Magic keyboard w/numeric keypad, wireless trackpad, Kengsington Edge Trackball || Flux Capacitor in a secure location

---

I encourage kids to go ahead and play on my lawn. I mean, how else can I make sure the death-traps work?

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While I do agree with you and what you've outlined. I cannot help but think that if AD could use the sets that can be created in FontBook (which I've seen other apps make use of, btw) it would eliminate a number of issues while giving the user a nice consistency between different apps.

 

It can. If you use Format => Character => Show Character, the collections from Font Book are listed at bottom right. We can't edit those collections yet, but we can use them.

 

Currently the Font drop-down in the toolbar can't use them. It's on our list of things to do. We had planned to have it list most recently used fonts at the top, and then all the other fonts afterwards. We'll have a think if showing other collections would make sense. My feeling is that most recently used ought to be most generally useful, and then you really want all the fonts available. Collections would make more sense in a Studio Font tab.

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Derp. Thanks for the reminder, Dave! I forgot about the Character (Palette? Panel? what are windows like that called? ) thingamabob, as it usually just pops up in the middle of the screen and always has to be moved out of the way so I can see what the heck I'm working on. Sure it remembers where I moved it to after I close it and reopen it, but that memory only lasts for the current session. I quit AD and restart it and when I click on the Character button, the windoid pops up in the center, so it's move things around time. Again. It's a matter of learning how AD wants me to work more than anything else. 

Mac OS X Catinlina, 2014 iMac, 3.5 Ghz Intel Core i7, Huion Kamvas Pro 22 Graphic Tablet, 16GB RAM, MacOS10.12 || Magic keyboard w/numeric keypad, wireless trackpad, Kengsington Edge Trackball || Flux Capacitor in a secure location

---

I encourage kids to go ahead and play on my lawn. I mean, how else can I make sure the death-traps work?

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  • 3 months later...

+1 for showing user FontBook collections! The FontBook categorization does everything I really need, and of course it lets me look at all fonts if I choose that. Which I just about never do… hundreds and hundreds of them, and I never want a Chinese font for Thai text, and so on. If Affinity is a seriously Mac design environment, it makes sense to use OS features wherever they're up to the job. As CartoonMike says, one can of course use the Format>Character>Show Character menu, or even remember ⌘T… but as long as there's that Font pulldown, why not let it reflect user preferences?

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  • 1 year later...

Hi MEB,

I know about the Character Panel, but I do not own a Mac nor the Font Book manager. So I've tried to use NexusFont for Windows to create collections, but unfortunatelly with no success.

Any ideas how to create collections on Windows which will be shown in the characters panel?

Thanks!

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Hi IndigoMoon,

Sorry the delay getting back to you. I didn't know you're using the Windows version. NexusFont is a third-party font manager for Windows. Affinity doesn't recognise collections created in the third-party font managers.

I'm afraid currently there's no way to do this unless Windows provides a way to create collections through the Fonts folder which doesn't seem possible. Even so i don't think Affinity will pick them but i will have to check this out.

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