Font Management

[Kedgar]

Hello,

Fonts as you are probably aware have been a thorn in admins' (and creative
users') sides for a long time. Using the font management whitepapers from
Extensis, it is still not clear what I need to do (In 10.6) to clean/move
the default fonts to ready it for management using Fusion or Fusion2. In
10.5 I wrote a simple script to move things around... it seemed to work
pretty well.

It seems as if different admins follow different ways of cleaning the fonts. What do you guys do to ready a machine for font management? We are looking
at maybe moving to Extensis UTS, does anyone have alternative suggestions
for something that worked better in their environment?

Thank you,
Ken

[stevewood]

I don't have a suggestion for an alternative, but instead will give a nod to
UTS. We use it here and it has been a dream to use. Set it and forget it
for us, for the most part. I had some minor hiccups but a backup,
re-install, and restore fixed it with no issues. Most of my users didn't
even know there was an issue.

As far as cleaning out folders, I honestly just leave everything where it is
now, even though I know that can bite me in the but later. We've had a few
instances where items went to the client for approval with system fonts in
place. We had to scramble to find replacements that were not system fonts.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

[donmontalvo]

UTS is the only game in town if you want to centrally manage fonts in your environment. It leverages AD, it can store license info and offers notification. It can run on a Windows server (even as a VM). It's a merge of Extensis Suitcase and FontReserve. Suitcase users will be familiar with the interface, FontReserve users will need to adjust. We generally set clients to cache the entire library at first connection, then it checks in at each launch (users can manually trigger, or you can set schedule for checking in).

Depending on the environment, we strip out unnecessary fonts (using Extensis' doc), but in the past couple firms we decided to script removal of the fonts. In other words, if a user is having font problems, they run an AppleScript that moves everything from ~/Library/Fonts/ to ~/Dekstop/Removed_Personal_Fonts/ (script creates date stamped sub folders so nothing gets overwritten) then the script triggers reboot. On reboot all font caches are purged. The script is a logout hook, so users are aware that logging out reboots them. End of font cache problems, end of rogue fonts in their home directory.

Don

[Kedgar]

Thanks to everyone, I will see what I can come up with. It looks like we
may be going to UTS quickly.

[Stanford]

Ken-

Font Agent Pro from Insider Software has comparable features and is worth a look in your research and an addition to your short list. We’ve been using it for years and we’re very happy with it.

Thanks,

Justin

[winkelhe]

dont forget font explorer. still a small company and taking feature requests. i demoed the product for a while, it was quite nice.

eric winkelhake
mundocomww
office 312 220 1669
cell 312 504 5155