Why is font handling still so bad?

[MacGizmo]

I suspect your beef is with the specific application not macOS in general. You can manage fonts with the macOS built in FontBook app. Whether you can hide/show specific fonts in specific apps seems an app thing, not a macOS thing.

No, the problem is ENTIRELY with the macOS. Apps will show all the fonts available from the System. Period. Yes, certain apps allow you to "filter" fonts in the menu, and FontBook allows you to create Collections. But those Collections aren't available in most apps. And filtering your fonts in individual apps is tedious and requires you to manually add fonts to the individual filters.

The simple solution is the one that has worked for decades on any computer (Windows or Mac) that I've ever used... which is to simply allow the user to choose which fonts are active—reserving only around 8-10 fonts as "untouchable" for OS use (in the past those were Arial, Georgia, Verdana, Chicago, etc.)

 

[Alameda]

A font collection is quite easy to use in Word.
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Honest to G-d, how on Earth do you think that is "easy"?

In 1987, you just chose "Font". Not a four-layer hierarchical menu of fonts that let me chose Bold Bold Italic.

For that matter, we chose a font and then we chose whether to make it bold or italic. We didn't have to change the font in order to make some text bold or italic, which makes no sense. The system or application should simply swap in the bold version of the font if it's present. It shouldn't be part of the user interface.

 

[wonderings]

Adobe pro user, not sure I have ever used any of the main 3 apps (Indesign, Illustrator or Photoshop) to find and go through fonts there. I find the font I want externally either through the Adobe font website or other websites that have downloadable fonts. Most of the time I know the name of the font I want to use so I just type it in and there it is.

I still have Font Explorer Pro to store all my fonts and activate them if I need them. For a font I want to select in Indesign I simply open the font menu and type what I want and there it is. I can see the frustration if you are using the menu to browse fonts, just was not aware people actually used that to search for a certain font to use.

 

[bogdanw]

For that matter, we chose a font and then we chose whether to make it bold or italic. We didn't have to change the font in order to make some text bold or italic, which makes no sense. The system or application should simply swap in the bold version of the font if it's present. It shouldn't be part of the user interface.

You can still do that, but you also have the option to directly choose a variant of the font (italic, bold, bold italic etc).



Besides the Font Collections, there is also the Recent Fonts menu. So, the fonts you use regularly will appear on top of the list.

 

[benwiggy]

The only solution is to keep sending Feedback to Apple that only a minimal set of system fonts should be locked. There's an irony that a folder full of fonts marked "Supplemental" cannot be disabled.

There are 768 fonts in /System/Library/Fonts, very few of which I actually use. (And some of which have problems, like the broken Truetype hinting in Avenir Next.)

 

[Alameda]

You can still do that, but you also have the option to directly choose a variant of the font (italic, bold, bold italic etc).

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Besides the Font Collections, there is also the Recent Fonts menu. So, the fonts you use regularly will appear on top of the list.

But there’s no need to display these variants. It adds to the difficulty of using the font menus in Mac applications.

 

[bogdanw]

But there’s no need to display these variants. It adds to the difficulty of using the font menus in Mac applications.

That is your opinion. Others might prefer to click one time instead of three times to select bold italic whatever font. Personally, I don’t care

 

[Fishrrman]

If "font handling" hasn't improved by now...
... I'm going to speculate that it NEVER will become so.

It is what it is:
Just one of those things with which folks who use computers will have to wrangle as the years roll by...

 

[Alameda]

That is your opinion. Others might prefer to click one time instead of three times to select bold italic whatever font. Personally, I don’t care

No, because if you set Bold and Underline by changing the font, then if you change the overall font, you lose the bold and underline.

 

[Slartibart]

No, because if you set Bold and Underline by changing the font, then if you change the overall font, you lose the bold and underline.

that surely depends on the program you use or how you actually use it - if the font face for bold is available for a font family change, most programs will just replace the font family keeping e.g. the bold face where the document uses it. Otherwise in various programs you can assign »styles«, so when you have a document where you want typographic changes, you modify the style, and you are immediately done.

 

[Alameda]

that surely depends on the program you use or how you actually use it - if the font face for bold is available for a font family change, most programs will just replace the font family keeping e.g. the bold face where the document uses it. Otherwise in various programs you can assign »styles«, so when you have a document where you want typographic changes, you modify the style, and you are immediately done.

Yes, right and so it is not necessary for the font menu to list all of the variants. The software should simply apply them if used, that’s all.

There’s no denying that font menus on Macs are virtually unusable.

 

[Slartibart]

Yes, right and so it is not necessary for the font menu to list all of the variants. The software should simply apply them if used, that’s all.

Well. I for once like to have option to visually inspect my installed fonts within a program - including to be sure what faces of a font (family) are installed… do I need the exact visual preview of a font face from an in program menu? not really… as other I access via search, but yes, I want to know what faces of a font are available.

There’s no denying that font menus on Macs are virtually unusable.

I deny that statement… strongly 🤓

 

[Alameda]

Well. I for once like to have option to visually inspect my installed fonts within a program - including to be sure what faces of a font (family) are installed… do I need the exact visual preview of a font face from an in program menu? not really… as other I access via search, but yes, I want to know what faces of a font are available.

I deny that statement… strongly 🤓

Seriously? So when you’re looking for Palatino and you have to scroll past the Urdu and Swahili and Greek and Cyrillic fonts to find it… that’s no problem for you? Wow.

 

[benwiggy]

that’s no problem for you?

It's something of an annoying inconvenience that renders the font menu not very efficient; but that's a long way from "virtually unusable".

As said, you can start typing P A L to get to Palatino in the list.

 

[Slartibart]

Seriously? So when you’re looking for Palatino and you have to scroll past the Urdu and Swahili and Greek and Cyrillic fonts to find it… that’s no problem for you? Wow.

please read again what I wrote - I will use »search« to locate Palatino (or just press »P« to jump to that part of the fonts-menu) and then likely check the installed faces manually/visually.

Also I write sometimes using all of the fonts you mentioned, so I do not feel like these are unnescessary - and I seldom feel scrolling past something is a ”problem”.

 

[Alameda]

That is your opinion. Others might prefer to click one time instead of three times to select bold italic whatever font. Personally, I don’t care

So... here's the deal: I'm not saying that you shouldn't be allowed to have 1,000 fonts of 20 languages in your font menu, I'm just saying that people who don't want all those fonts shouldn't have to deal with them. I should have one global way to pull out all the fonts I don't want besides a small handful of system fonts. For that matter... if I don't want my applications to display some or all of the system fonts, I should be able to disable that, as well. And I don't want to do it individually for every application on my Mac.