what's the deal with fonts and macs

[Foxer]

OK. I've been on Macs for about a year now, and I think I've just about got it all figured out - EXCEPT FONTS! Can someone tell me what the deal is with fonts? In Windows, I had lots of fonts and that was that. In mac, I have lots of fonts and that is that as well. Lately, I've been poking around with the idea of getting some additional fonts and I have ntoiced that there are all these font manager software packages out there. What do they do and why would I need one? I've just ordered Illustrtor 10, and I know there are many new fonts included with that - will I need one of these managers then?

Sorry for the kindergarten question.

 

[timbloom]

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but what font management was use for in older operating systems was to manage more fonts than the system could handle. There used to be a limit to how many fonts that you could have running on your computer at any given time, and font management systems let you easily switch between them. I hear that this is not the case in OS X.
A side thought might be that running a load of fonts at any one time might gobble up a large chunk of precious RAM.

 

[hesdeadjim]

Originally posted by timbloom
Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but what font management was use for in older operating systems was to manage more fonts than the system could handle. There used to be a limit to how many fonts that you could have running on your computer at any given time, and font management systems let you easily switch between them. I hear that this is not the case in OS X.
A side thought might be that running a load of fonts at any one time might gobble up a large chunk of precious RAM.

I think you are right in most of the cases (although I don't know about the limitation). If you are only adding a few fonts to your computer, you don't need a font manager. A font manager is more for pros that can have individual fonts for different projects (so they end up having like thousands of fonts).

 

[tjwett]

Usually font management software is used by people working in Graphic Design, with apps like Quark, Illustrator, etc. Personally, I have roughly 30,000 different fonts in my arsenal, some I use often, some never. Could you imagine writing someone and email and you press the Fonts button and after about 10 minutes a list of 30,000 fonts shows up, and all you wanted was Arial! A font manager will keep them organized by a number of customizable categories and can keep them seperate from your system fonts. Apps like Quark and Illustrator can choke to death when you have a ton of fonts just floating loose in the system. Even if you're not using them for design a font manager could still be very useful for organization purposes. You are probably noticing that you're hearing about them alot more now because you've switched to Mac and many, many Mac users are graphic designers.