I came back to Macs and OS X after using them last in the early 90s but am finding it hard to get to grips with the sheer number of fonts that ship with OS X Tiger (and presumably that has increased with Leopard).
On the Power Mac 5400/180 which I used in the 90s (till I moved to Windows 🙄) I used Clarisworks, and there one could simply click (and hold!) on the Font menu and see a list of all the fonts available AND SEE IMMEDIATELY WHAT THEY LOOKED LIKE. You would not have to scroll very far down beyond the screen to have seen the entirety of the fonts on the system.
Now, on OS X the shift seems to have been towards using a Font panel, which personally I also find very confusing. There seem to be "Collections" of fonts, of which several nonsenical ones seem to have pre-defined - "Fun" and "Classic"?? But the worst thing in terms of potential usability (in my eyes) is that the list of fonts in the font panel does not immediately show what they look like until you click on them and look at the preview - in contrast to that "Font" menu in Clarisworks which immediately listed the names of the fonts in their respective style (I think Microsoft Word does this also with their Font menu?). The OS seems to contain so many fonts that personally I only know what about 10 of the fonts included look like without clicking on them and finding out again. Also, the top "effects" buttons don't seem very user-friendly - why do the shadow offset/opacity sliders look greyed out??
Is there anyway to get the list of fonts in the font panel to be in their respective fonts? And can someone explain the whole "collection"/"library" ideas with regard to fonts?
Thank you 😱
On the Power Mac 5400/180 which I used in the 90s (till I moved to Windows 🙄) I used Clarisworks, and there one could simply click (and hold!) on the Font menu and see a list of all the fonts available AND SEE IMMEDIATELY WHAT THEY LOOKED LIKE. You would not have to scroll very far down beyond the screen to have seen the entirety of the fonts on the system.
Now, on OS X the shift seems to have been towards using a Font panel, which personally I also find very confusing. There seem to be "Collections" of fonts, of which several nonsenical ones seem to have pre-defined - "Fun" and "Classic"?? But the worst thing in terms of potential usability (in my eyes) is that the list of fonts in the font panel does not immediately show what they look like until you click on them and look at the preview - in contrast to that "Font" menu in Clarisworks which immediately listed the names of the fonts in their respective style (I think Microsoft Word does this also with their Font menu?). The OS seems to contain so many fonts that personally I only know what about 10 of the fonts included look like without clicking on them and finding out again. Also, the top "effects" buttons don't seem very user-friendly - why do the shadow offset/opacity sliders look greyed out??
Is there anyway to get the list of fonts in the font panel to be in their respective fonts? And can someone explain the whole "collection"/"library" ideas with regard to fonts?
Thank you 😱
