Font "investigate" utility

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cpking
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Font "investigate" utility

Post by cpking »

I used to use Bitstream's Font Navigator which came bundled with the Corel Suite of products. It had the ability to "look" in to a font to determine it's style (i.e., serif, sans, etc.). Since I have a library of over 15,000 fonts, it would be helpful to have the ability to automate the tagging process. I used to use this feature a great deal when previewing and selecting fonts for a given project.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

I don't see why a custom view that looks at the PANOSE number > 10 cannot do that, but that doesn't currently seem to be possible.
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MikeW
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by MikeW »

That function of Font Nav is about the only thing going for it. But it also is very dependent on the information being present and correct for viability.

I think for initial categorizing fonts it would be an aid to otherwise using MT to create groups, tags or what have you. Especially for a new user to MT as it would (hopefully) cut down on some of the work to organizing fonts within MT's methods.

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Erwin Denissen
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by Erwin Denissen »

Too many fonts have either incorrect or missing information, so we decided to fully ignore it. Even though it might help you, it would also cause a lot of confusion for other customers who think they can rely on that information. Then they will blame us for adding it as a feature :?
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notts
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by notts »

Hi
Love using MainType 6
But it seems Panose numbers are now only mentioned in font information panel
Other threads mention use of Panose as sorting method in columns, bringing back this functionality would be greatly appreciated
As with any other tool it can be used or not

Cheers
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by Erwin Denissen »

There are several reasons why it didn't make it into recent versions of MainType.

- Many fonts contain invalid or incomplete PANOSE information
- Sorting seems smart, but it is actually not helpful in most cases
- It would take additional development time and would also slow things down
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cpking
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by cpking »

I totally get that many fonts are incorrectly coded with regard to this. However, I suspect that most (not many) are not incorrectly tagged. So perhaps if were a tickable feature, the user could use or ignore the data. But even if 75% of the data were correct, in a library of 16,000+ fonts, being able to cull by style, etc., would be at least a helpful start.
nabsltd
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by nabsltd »

Erwin Denissen wrote:There are several reasons why it didn't make it into recent versions of MainType.

- Many fonts contain invalid or incomplete PANOSE information
Although true, you are making the assumption that all PANOSE data in font files is completely useless.

FontExpert has a nice PANOSE search tool that allows you to grab the PANOSE information from a font and fills in a dialog with the info so you can then change it. By changing a few values to "Any", you can then search for fonts that are much more likely to be close to the original font. Sure, font files might not have 100% accurate PANOSE info, but if you only need to match a couple of fields (like "Serif Style" and "Weight" on a Latin Text font), you are quite likely to decent matches, and you will be able to see fonts that have grossly bad PANOSE info (like a lot of "Any" values).
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by Erwin Denissen »

It seems more people like to have this feature,so I'll add support for PANOSE to the to-do list.
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cpking
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Re: Font "investigate" utility

Post by cpking »

I know this is a long and much debated subject, but I'd love to have MT use the internal font information as a starting point. Many customers would likely presume this information correct, which we generally know to be a bad idea. However, I believe most of it would be correct, and when you have a library of 30K+ fonts, it would at least be a starting point. Part of the problem otherwise is that you end up adding the same typeface (or variation) to your system because you forgot or didn't realize you already had it. The font manager with Corel has many problems, but using the font info is one of the only things I (still) use it for.
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