I just installed LinoType FontExplorer X for the first time on my home machine and I have to say I am VERY impressed with this free application. Before today I had been using Suitcase X1 at work. I just saw the excellent reviews this product got on MacUpdate and decided to give it a whirl. The installation and setup is a breeze and the application seems to follow the same rules Apple's Font Book does when messing with Library and User fonts. (meaning they don't conflict with eachother). It also has plug-ins for QuarkXPress 6.5, InDesign and Illustrator CS and CS2 for automatic font activation.<br><br>It doesn't have any font "fixing" tools, but it does allow you to clean font caches easily and has a very iTunes-like way of managing the fonts. I will never personally buy another Font management application as long as this one is around. I'm VERY impressed. I'm going to test it thoroughly and make the suggestion that our office switches from Suitcase X1 to this app if I don't find something wrong with it. I am testing Suitcase Fusion and it doesn't impress me.<br><br>Anyone else try this app yet?<br><br>

Tried it - but it does say 'do not use in a production environment' for good reason - I work with way too many kinds of fonts and files for this to work for me...<br><br>I may be able to put it to use at home, where I have greater control over everything...<br><br>The only thing that annoyed me was that I had to uninstall EVERYTHING (Linotype as well as FAP) and start over when I wanted to switch back. <br><br><br><br>

What version did you try? <br><br>

Something that had '104' in it? Was still beta...<br><br><br>

The newest version is very impressive to me. Especially compared to the crap that is suitcase. What did you mean by you work with too many types of fonts for this program? As far as I know it works with every type of font I've ever heard of.<br><br>

Have you tried FontAgent Pro as a comparison? <br><br>30 day demo: http://www.insidersoftware.com/DL_index.php<br><br>

Yes, I tried the 30 day demo. I didn't have problems with it on my machine, but my co-worker tried it on his machine and had a huge problem getting things to work. Due to that we decided we'd stick with suitcase even though it has massively slow activation when iChat is running ...Suitcase Fusion also seems slow, but not AS slow. It also quits, unlike X1. Every time I restart I have to force quit that damn app. <br><br>I'm crossing my fingers for FontExplorer ...so far it's done nothing but impress me.<br><br>

FAP works best for me, but I realize it's not for everyone. Takes a few restarts and cache cleanings to get it to work right - even for me - and I make sure to keep a backup set of all the fonts I import, because I was told by an Insider Software rep. that sometimes the library that FAP creates can get corrupted & the system reads them as Unix files.<br><br>Auto-activation isn't 100% perfect, but that may be due to all the duplicates I have among my 2400 fonts at work. It seemed like Linotype got confused with my library - it would activate some and not others, and when I manually overrode the program, it wound up *de*activating ALL the fonts in more than a few of my documents. <br><br>It's got potential, but I can't afford to play around with it at work. <br><br>If anyone's serious about using FAP, I've installed it and reinstalled more than a few times - and can offer some advice on how set it up and get it working nicely. <br><br><br>

WoW I thought all this font Bull Shiit was a thing of the past ! ! <br>I guess not <br><br>

I only have about 600 fonts on my work machine. I've already installed FontExplorer there to test it out ...iKnow it is beta, but at Final Release candidate 4 it can't be bad. Especially not with a 4.5 star rating on macupdate (out of 83 reviews)<br><br>