Managing Fonts & Clip-art

**antimix** · 25 January 2006, 10:41 PM

Hello,

if you go in Font Gallery, press OPTIONS, and ADD FONT FROM DISK..., and you select any folder containing your your personal font collection, XARA gives you an error message, since the folder it is not in the XARA LIBRARY FOLDER FORMAT. Only CD/folders from XARA are recognized.

Do you know if it exists any application capable of creating XARA LIBRARY FONT FOLDERS from a simple folder with several TTF files ?

Regards.

Roberto

**gwpriester** · 25 January 2006, 10:49 PM

If your fonts are True Type, you can just put them in the Windows Fonts directory and they will be available in Xara.

I'm not sure if the Windows XP fonts folder can handle Type One Postscript fonts but I know it can work with Open Type fonts.

The Add Fonts from Disc, I think, is for adding fonts from the Xara CD.

Gary

**antimix** · 25 January 2006, 11:18 PM

Hello to all,

I can not wait until Monday

(I will be out the rest of the week)....

Like most of you, I have several font folders, that I would like to have displayed with preview in XARA Font Gallery, in order to choose the most suitable without installing the font in Windows on order to see the look and feel. In addition increasing the number of installed font in windows, decrease the system memory and system stability. So I started to develop a FONT LIBRARIAN for XARA Extreme. The result is the following:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/attachme...1&d=1138234258

It is written in VB .NET, and it is currently to a beta stage. I improve and enhance it almost daily. However I was finally able to create my own FONT LIBRARIES that are recognized by Xara Extreme and displayed correctly in the Fonta Gallery !!

I started the develop in October, and I spent two months in just understanding the new .NET philosophy, and then the most difficult task was to study how to manage the Windows Fonts, since my Tool should be able to create preview of the fonts WITHOUT INSTALL THEM in windows, and MDSN documentation is not always clear.

Regards.

Roberto

**sallybode** · 26 January 2006, 01:56 AM

I use a font manager called Bitstream which comes bundled with CorelDRAW. I like it very much, those who don't use a font manager, don't know what they are missing.

One thing I like best about the one I have is that it lets me sort by font styles, so if I need a serif font, I am only going to look at serif fonts, or script will bring up only script fonts, etc., etc.

Also it allows me to type in a sample text string so that if there are particular letter shapes that really help identify the font, I can look just at those letters.

Saves me a ton of time at work and at home.

**stlewis** · 26 January 2006, 07:12 AM

Roberto's work looks interesting, but I continue to swear by FontRainbow from Everclear.

I use it to look for a suitable font (it can work multiple font folders), switch it on (ie install it), and then try it in Xtreme. If the font is not right, it is one click in FontRrainbow to uninstall it.

**SAMEH** · 26 January 2006, 12:29 PM

Hello all
I just want tosay that the tool which antimix made it is a great toll . could you let us try it antimix .

**sallybode** · 26 January 2006, 03:32 PM

Bitstream works in a similar manner, you can have it search and install fonts to itself from any folder you choose. The list of these appear in a window on the left. On the right is all of you actually installed fonts.

As part of the setup process all but your system fonts and fonts used on the web are copied to these other folders and then deleted from your Windows font folder.

When you install a font, it is just a matter of dragging the font from the left window to the right and similarily to unistall, drag it back. Instead of listing every font, the font family and all its variation is listed as one font, which makes perusing them faster. And it installed and deinstalls on the fly, the results being instantly available with no down time to shut down or to start up your application again.

If you have CorelDRAW and haven't taken advantage of this feature, it isn't hard to set it up. And full instructions for doing so can be found at Unleash.com.

DRAW doesn't do all that Xara does but it does somethings which are really useful such as build publications and make mulitple page .pdfs. and is significantly less expensive to InDesign or Illustrator, especially if you qualify for the student version via the Academic Software store.

Google search, as to the other font managers, Bitstream is usually still among the top rated.

**a4hire** · 27 January 2006, 02:03 AM

Roberto ,.
Is your program available for download ?

**Availor** · 27 January 2006, 05:29 AM

I think it is a very nice feature. I use Corel's Bistream as well, since I find that all other managers have hard time dealing with Right-to-left fonts.

**sallybode** · 27 January 2006, 03:33 PM

I put one too many fonts in my font folder at work before I understood the importance of a font manager. At work they run Windows 2000 NT and it does not have as much capacity for fonts as XP. Even though I had far fewer fonts installed on my work system to my home system, it irretrivably crashed my fonts folder at work. It doesn't warn you either if you are nearing that limit.

I got around this crash for a bit I did not need to install any new fonts, the rest of my system was running fine. But I decided to set up Bitstream at home to see how I liked it. So since it was already installed as part of the CD 12 suite, I just configured it and even though my font folder is still technically crashed, no matter, I can add and delete fonts irregardless now.

If I think I'm getting too high on my installed fonts, just drag them from the right pane to the left, and when I need them, drag them back.

Since the fonts are not actually installed in the font folder, they don't have to load into memory on boot up. This makes boot up faster.

That is a time saver. In more ways than one.