[G4] Font managers and OS choices?

[Ascender]

Roger,

I wanted to drop you a note thanking you for your information on font
control.  It really helps to get advice with someone who has had your
experience background.

I plan on looking into font reserve today.

I don¹t have a lot of funds to update to either OS X.2 or X.3 (much less the
additional Desktop Publishing software needed) so it sounds like my best bet
it to load into OSX and run in classic mode?  I have been booting into 9.2.2
at present; not wanting to take the leap into OSX Classic just trying to
avoid additional problems and expenses.   Is there any other issues I will
need to be aware of when changing to Classic as I have not researched this
option.  Is there a beginners guide somewhere that I can trouble shoot out
of?

You mentioned that I could get my old fonts on a zip and install them; the
fonts I want to retrieve are on my old 1700/120; I couldn¹t just drop them
into the font folders?  I don¹t think I had a font manager on the 1700/120.

Thank you for the tip on Disc Warrior.  I was just discussing it (v3) on
another list.  It just spins on my G4; though my daughter is able to use it
on her G3.   Another G4 owner was having the same experience with it just
spinning and never being able to boot off of it.


Thanks again for your patience and reply.

ascender at earthlink.net

On 12/9/03 2:46 PM, "Power Macintosh G4 List" <G4 at lists.themacintoshguy.com>
wrote:

> Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 13:03:25 -0600
> From: Roger Harris <roger at rogerdharris.com>
> Subject: Re: [G4] Font managers and OS choices?
> 
> I am a loooong time (before computers) graphic artist. I have been on
> computers since 1991. I provide support for a few graphics folk and some
> artist. I have at least 5,000 fonts on my work station.
> 
> I have used all the major font management programs on OS 9.x and all
> versions of OSX. The best font manager on any platform or OS version is
> Font Reserve. Suitcase (SC) is very good, but not as good. Extensis owns
> Suitcase and has recently acquired Font Reserve (FR). OS 10.3 is causing
> a need for an update on SC and FR. I am sure Extensis is doing
> something. They will be rolling the programs together sometime; When? I
> am guessing that the next fix on FR will let you go until the next major
> OS update you make. I haven't had a paid update on FR since OSX v1.
> 
> FR 3.1.xx will install and work well for OS X and Classic.
> 
> You will also need a program called Font Doctor or Font Doctor X; it
> makes much deeper font repairs than the font managers. This is a real
> must have for OS X, as it is very picky about the condition of fonts.
> 
> You can just get you old fonts on a zip and move them. SC or FR will
> install them and organize them. The fonts are good in OS9 and OSX; FR
> will handle all updates transparently.
> 
> You are in a place were you need to make a plan for moving to OSX; OS 9
> is at the end. It is costly to move to OSX; all your programs need to be
> updated. Panther will run almost as snappy on your mac as OS 9. It has a
> font manager but it is too buggy at this point and will never be good
> for professional work. You should plan to go to OS X 10.3 and try to
> update Quark to 6 as soon as you can, although it works fine in Classic.
> OR Adobe might make a move to InDesign CS very attractive. I don't know
> if you will want FR before or after Quark, but I recommend going to OSX
> before buying font management software.
> 
> A 2.x version of Disk Warrior will work fine for Panther for quit
> awhile; you will boot to OS 9 before booting to DW. Panther has a lot of
> free and cheap shareware utilities available that will keep it humming.
> 
> OSX needs at least 512 mb of RAM. after you get your main programs to
> OSX and get adjusted to the new EVERYTHING, you will never want to see
> OS 9 again.
> 
> Roger