I have read in these forums that the Font Navigator is not the font management application of choice. So, what would one use instead of Font Navigator?
Today, I was working on a small project, and I wanted a "70's" style loopy font. I have purchased better software, and going through my own learning curves and used Font Navigator for the first time, in fact, the first time I used a font management application. But, I didn't like it much. I had to arrow key through all my fonts, one at a time (but at a fast speed) to see if I had anything like what I was imagining, which was actually slower that just creating text and selecting a font dropdown menu to see the rendered fonts!. The style and artistic filters in the Font Navigator with CD didn't help much. I selected three runner ups, and printed samples, and - the text was small, only one sided, and print options would produce three single side pages for each font with small text and a small text sample.
I went to the internet, and found just what I was looking for, Funkydori. And, the font itself also has some 13 stylistic sets.
So - is there another font management application others prefer to use, that one can browse several fonts at one time, compare selected fonts, and print out comparisons on paper? As well as viewing the different style sets of a font together, with better print options? I can search the web for font managers, but I believe there are a lot of professionals and professional amateurs here with better experience that can make good suggestions.
Also, you can use Font Navigator for organize fonts. For example, select all fonts that starts with A on the left side, and press Ctrl+C for copy fonts. The program will prompt a message, and ask when do you want to copy the selected fonts. You can create your own path, such as "C:\Fonts\A". Then, Font Navigator will prompt: "This folder doesn't exist, do you want to create it?". Press enter or choose yes, and you will have all the fonts of your disk (from several folders) stored on one folder. Repeat the same with each letter, and you will have a new folder with subfolders A,B,C,... easy to find and organize.
Other tip: you an create "Groups" of fonts, ie Bold, Handwritting, Gothic, etc and copy fonts to this group. It's easy to choose your favoriite fonts if you don't remember the name. Also, a Group can be for one special job, ie "Fonts for Computer Magazine". You can install the fonts that this job need, but instead to install each font, add the Group. When finished the job, uninstall the group. If one or more font are part of other installed group, those fonts will not unistalled. But that prevent to have hundred of fonts that you are not using. Less fonts, more speed.
Of course you can preview the fonts without install it, and change the words for correct match with a sample. Remember that FontNavigator was developed for Bitstream, the creator of MyFonts.com and WhatTheFont web pages, and the provider of fonts for CorelDRAW since many years.
Hi.
Exactly Steven. Either way the third party font manager does need some info from Corel to make it happen. I don't think FontNav is special for being able to do this. Not at all. Possibly either a contract is in place between Bitstream and Corel, or Corel just doesn't want third parties to have the info or this feature.
Developers that make font managers, that would like to have the ability to integrate with CorelDraw, easily could. They would need to contact Corel and get some documentation API. It could be as easy as that. I don't think Corel is openly releasing the API or other font managers would advertise that they are compatible with CorelDraw.
Maybe Corel is building on Connect, to make it a font manager, and getting rid of Bitstream in X7.
~John
Yes, and no.