TidBITS#739/26-Jul-04
=====================
Adam continues the summer Mac conference circuit, reporting on
how he spent several sleep-deprived nights in Dearborn, Michigan
at the ADHOC (formerly MacHack) conference. In particular, check
out the winners of the ADHOC Showcase programming competition!
Also in this issue, Matt Neuburg goes face to (type)face with
Insider Software's FontAgent Pro, and we note the releases of
Salling Clicker 2.2 and WebSTAR 5.3.3.
Topics:
MailBITS/26-Jul-04
ADHOC 2004: Some Old, Some New, Continued Success
Managing Fonts with FontAgent Pro
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/26-Jul-04
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-739.html>
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Copyright 2004 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license
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This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* READERS LIKE YOU! Help keep TidBITS great via our voluntary <------ NEW!
contribution program. Special thanks this week to Terje Berg,
Michael Roebuck, and Kathleen Traylor for their kind support!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
* SMALL DOG ELECTRONICS: iPods! <------------------------------------ NEW!
Prices dropped on discounted and refurbished iPods!
10 GB - $189, 20 GB - $289, and 30 GB - $310!
Visit: <http://www.smalldog.com/tb/> 800-511-MACS
* FETCH SOFTWORKS: Want to copy files between FTP servers? <--------- NEW!
Use Fetch, the FTP client for Mac OS 9 and X, and you can
drag and drop files for fast and easy file copying.
Download your free trial version! <http://fetchsoftworks.com/>
* Dr. Bott, LLC: Your 8:30 class just became a lot less painful. <--- NEW!
iTalk gives your iPod a high capacity voice recorder.
Click "Record" and the iPod hears all, saving for
later review. Like when you're awake. <http://www.drbott.com/>
* Web Crossing: Did you know Web Crossing does Blogs?!? Used for
workgroup reports, entertainment, advice columns, politics, or
whatever, Web Crossing's Blogs can integrate w/discussions,
access lists, etc. Try it! <http://www.webcrossing.com/tb-504>
* iPod Armor takes the abuse, so your iPod doesn't have to! <-------- NEW!
Rugged aluminum construction keeps iPod safe from scratches
and other random daily hazards. Your iPod is always safe in
iPod Armor. <http://ipodarmor.com/index.php?refID=5>
* MindFortress: Need a secure digital wallet to store passwords, <--- NEW!
serial numbers, credit card info? Notes? Pictures? Movies?
Custom templates to make your own cards to fit your needs?
Get MindFortress! Free trial at <http://www.mindfortress.com/>
* Confluence: The Professional Wiki: A web-based knowledge <--------- NEW!
management tool that enables your team to share information
internally and externally. As used by Boeing, HSBC, and more!
<http://www.atlassian.com/c/TIDB/10352>
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MailBITS/26-Jul-04
------------------
**Salling Clicker 2.2 Adds Capabilities** -- Jonas Salling has
updated his Bluetooth-based remote control software, Salling
Clicker, to version 2.2 (see "Salling Clicker in Action" in
TidBITS-694_). Billed as "The Digital Hub, on Steroids," the
new version bulks up with support for controlling EyeTV and
Squeezebox media devices, and VLC (VideoLAN client) software.
When used to control PowerPoint 2004 as a presentation device,
Clicker 2.2 displays the title of the next slide. This version
also adds support for new Bluetooth phones and handhelds,
including phones running the Symbian OS. Salling Clicker 2.2
is a free upgrade for current users, or $20 for new users, and
is a 3.7 MB download. It can be used in trial mode, which is
limited to 30 clicks. [JLC]
<http://www.salling.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07320>
<http://www.slimdevices.com/>
<http://www.elgato.com/>
<http://www.videolan.org/>
**WebSTAR Update Patches Vulnerabilities** -- 4D, Inc. has
released version 5.3.3 of its 4D WebSTAR Web, email, and FTP
server suite to address reported vulnerabilities and add other
enhancements. The update is free to all licensed WebSTAR V
owners. WebSTAR versions 5.3.2 and earlier have a stack overflow
vulnerability in their FTP service that could allow an attacker
to gain administrative privileges by sending a long FTP command; a
sample script included with WebSTAR could allow directory indexing
of any directory on the server; and the Web server component could
allow an attacker to download the php.ini files that might contain
sensitive information such as the account name and password used
by PHP to communicate with databases. All WebSTAR server
administrators should update their servers to the latest version.
4D says the upgrade also offers improved spam filtering, with the
addition of IP address whitelisting and the capability to filter
messages pre-tagged with SpamAssassin headers. [MHA]
<http://www.4d.com/products/downloads_4dws.html>
ADHOC 2004: Some Old, Some New, Continued Success
-------------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It is tempting to see, when faced with a decline for the
quantitative attendance numbers for a conference, some
larger trend or lurking bogeyman. Such an explanation would
be appropriate for the thinning of the herd at the just-passed
Macworld Expo in Boston, nominally hampered by the refusal of
Apple and other large companies to exhibit. In reality, it is
not difficult to understand Apple's stance: this second of two
major trade shows creates an artificial and potentially troubling
product release deadline, forces the company to cede some level
of control over any announcements, and does not particularly
serve the goal of introducing the Macintosh and iPod to new
customers. Ironically, with the recent releases of AirPort
Express, the current crop of large monitors, and the Click
Wheel iPod, Apple would have had plenty of announcement fodder
for Macworld Expo, but at this point, Apple doesn't need the
customer clumping of a trade show to gain media attention for
such announcements. In addition, the Apple Stores meet the goal
of introducing potential Macintosh and iPod users to their new
digital buddies.
All that explains the drastic drop in attendance for Boston's
Macworld Expo. But there are no such sweeping explanations for
the small number of attendees at last week's ADHOC - the Advanced
Developer Hands On Conference - previously known, of course, as
MacHack. In the past, MacHack has never been a particularly large
conference, maxing out under 500 attendees, but attendance this
year was notably sparse, with roughly 100 developers present. It's
not as though there are that many fewer developers out there, and
although Apple had almost no presence at ADHOC, there hasn't been
much of an official Apple contingent for some years.
<http://www.adhocconf.com/>
No, the explanation is simply that ADHOC's committee of volunteers
never managed to do much of the necessary marketing to introduce
the conference to people who hadn't attended in the past. Also
problematic was the name change and a new date that moved the
conference a month later to escape the heavy tread of Apple's
Worldwide Developer Conference (for which attendance is nearly
mandatory if you're a Macintosh developer). The new date fell
right after Macworld Expo and at the same time as a Digital Design
conference in Seattle that lured at least one long-time MacHack
regular away (PDF expert Leonard Rosenthol couldn't turn down
the offer of being paid to talk in Seattle - a financial and
geographical win over paying to attend ADHOC in the charmless
Dearborn, Michigan).
In essence, though, the problem lies with the fact that the people
who market the conference - the volunteer committee of attendees -
have no financial interest in the conference itself. That interest
lies with Expotech, a small conference organizing company that
has always handled all the logistics for MacHack (actually, given
their lengthy relationship with the conference, everyone at
MacHack thinks of Expotech as Carol Lynn and Maurita Plouff and
their increasingly grown-up daughters,). And while the committee's
attendance goal - attracting like-minded geeks to network with -
is admirable, decoupling it from the goal of turning a profit
results in a marketing approach that tends toward the haphazard.
<http://www.expo-conv-svcs.com/>
Although this year's reduced attendance is undoubtedly troubling
and will hopefully result in renewed efforts on the part of this
year's committee, it didn't seem to make a qualitative difference.
Yes, there were fewer people to talk with in the hotel lobby, and
there were fewer sessions and papers, and we weren't able to take
over an entire theater for the annual movie screening (thus
eliminating the opportunity for group heckling of "I, Robot"),
but the conference retained its full sense of utility and fun.
The sessions I attended, such as James Goebbel's session on
Extreme Project Management and the Hardware Technical Trends
talk from Chad Magendanz, were extremely valuable. And I'm not
even a developer! I hope in the future to see more business-
oriented sessions (such as my Hacking the Press session, and
one I wasn't able to attend on using eSellerate by Josh Ferguson).
That would make the conference more attractive to other types
of highly technical users and executives.
There was some concern that ADHOC wouldn't really be MacHack,
particularly because the always notable MacHax Group's Best Hack
Contest was replaced by the ADHOC Showcase, featuring "demos" that
attendees later voted on with fake investment capital. However,
the change in name wasn't accompanied by more sweeping changes,
and as much as the new organizers of the ADHOC Showcase tried to
set themselves apart from the 17 years of the Best Hack Contest,
everyone found it difficult to break from the old terms and
traditions. Nonetheless, despite some presentation mishaps,
everyone had a good time and the lowered attendance meant that
it was possible to get to bed by 2 AM instead of 5 AM.
In short then, whatever that elusive thing that set MacHack apart
from every other conference was, ADHOC had it. The familiar faces
were there, the sessions were good, the demos were amusing, and
this year I managed to hook up with the group making the annual
pilgrimage to Zingerman's, an absolutely stunning deli in Ann
Arbor. Although ex-Mac OS 9 technical lead Keith Stattenfield
wasn't able to attend, he and some other Apple programmers joined
us via iChat AV (projected for the entire room) for a couple
of hours of humorous dissection of the movie "I, Robot." Rather
than attempt to describe an event for which you almost certainly
had to be there, you can see some short movies I took with my
Canon PowerShot S400 of the festivities. (Three warnings: the
movies make the most sense if you have seen "I, Robot" already;
you should watch them in order; and they're about 100 MB
combined, so don't even try unless you have a high-speed
Internet connection.)
<http://www.zingermans.com/>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/tidbits/resources/739/>
**ADHOC Showcase Top Demos** -- Even if the ADHOC Showcase wasn't
the full-metal straitjacket experience of the MacHax Best Hack
Contest, a number of the demos were still highly amusing. I hosted
a SubEthaEdit document for notes, and a number of people who
couldn't be at the conference joined via the Internet as well.
Here then are the top five demos, the first three of which
actually tied for 3rd (or 5th, if you prefer).
* Lisa Lippincott showed off Scroll Plate, which involved a
program that used an iSight to do color recognition, scrolling
the document up or down based on the color of an arrow (drawn on
a plate) in the iSight's field of view. Some devices have scroll
wheels; now we have a scroll plate!
* Wolf Rentzsch developed EtherPEG Cocoa, which was a port of a
previous year's hack, EtherPEG, to Cocoa. EtherPEG displays images
being transferred across an unencrypted Wi-Fi network; Wolf
enhanced it by making the images appear in order instead of
randomly. He would have done more, but while testing, someone
started using Google Image Search, and thus they developed a new
game that took the rest of their time. One person would do a
search and the other would watch the images and try to guess the
search terms. Who knows, maybe it will become the next game craze
to sweep the nation.
<http://www.etherpeg.org/>
* Adam Goldstein, a student, wrote ExposeHopper, a game in which
you invoke Expose, then navigate your player from window to window
in an attempt to collect the checkmarks in the corners. The trick
is that moving between windows causes your player to disappear in
a puff of Dock smoke.
* In second place was Mike Zornek's demo, The MegaMan Effect,
which replaced the standard icon bouncing animation of an
application launching with a full screen animation of the icon
zooming through a star field, taken from a cheesy video game
from years ago.
* Lastly, winning the first ADHOC Showcase was Jorg Brown's
Unsummarize, a clever bit of code that takes a short sentence
or phrase and "expands" it in the reverse of the way Apple's
Summarize service works (select text in a Services-aware
application then choose Services > Summarize from the application
menu). Unsummarize works (perhaps with some smoke and mirrors
for the demo) by performing a Web search using the selected text
and using the search results as the expansion. Jorg got the idea
for Unsummarize from a joke David Pogue made during the ADHOC
keynote about how Summarize was cool, but he'd really like
something that went the other direction so the Mac could write
his articles for him.
I hope the ADHOC committee will figure out a way to make these and
other demos available to the public, as has been done in the past
by the MacHax Group.
**Conference Rating** -- ADHOC is, as you've gathered, an
extremely unusual conference whose 18 years as MacHack colors
every aspect of the experience. That undoubtedly skews my
conference rating system somewhat. I won't attempt to rate ADHOC
as an exhibitor (since there aren't any). In terms of speaker
ratings, I'll note merely that there's no payment, no moderators,
and fairly confused logistics, but all that is sort of beside the
point, since speaking at ADHOC is something one does to contribute
to the community - it's a peer-to-peer event. And from the press
perspective, it makes no sense to have a press room, nor is
there ever much in the way of a news event (short of the results
of the Hack Contest/ADHOC Showcase), but neither is important in
the context of the conference (and the logistics are really
easy). As for my rating of the conference as an attendee, here
goes:
* Cost/value. ADHOC is about as cheap a conference as you'll find,
with prices ranging from $325 for a speaker who registers early to
$550 for a normal attendee who registers at the last minute. High
school and college students pay only $50, and anyone who has a
paper accepted by the paper committee gets free admission. The
hotel costs about $120 per night, but many people share rooms and
split the cost. Flying to Detroit is relatively easy and can be
cheap, since it's a Northwest Airlines hub. +1 point.
* Time/place. ADHOC is intentionally in a somewhat odd place in
part to avoid attendees wanting to leave the hotel, and the hotel
itself is part of the tradition of the conference at this point.
(The big question is, in my running joke of hacking the hotel,
will my four-foot wooden stake be found this year, after it
survived all of last year in the lobby in plain sight, staking
up one of the plants? See the links below for the entire story
of the stake.) The timing for the conference was mediocre this
year, coming as it did in such close proximity to so many other
conferences. 0 points.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06103>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06470>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07244>
* Logistics. Expotech makes the logistics surrounding ADHOC
simple, and the fact that they've been exactly the same for years
helps. The main oddity for newcomers is remembering that when
booking tickets, even though the conference nominally runs from
a Thursday through Saturday, the keynote is really Wednesday
night and things don't end until early in the morning on Sunday.
+1 point.
* Breadth and depth of exhibitors. There are no exhibitors, though
a few companies sponsor different aspects of the conference,
including Bare Bones, Nvidia, O'Reilly, QuickSilver, Speakeasy,
and well, us (to help promote our Take Control ebooks we donated
some money to buy fruit for the snack room). 0 points.
* Product support. If someone with a company you need help from
is in attendance, it's easy to find some time to get one-on-one
support. I had an extremely helpful talk with eSellerate's Josh
Ferguson, for instance, that helped make the conference even more
worthwhile. +1 point.
* Session Quality. Although I can't rate the quality of the
developer-specific sessions, all the others I attended were
top-notch. +1 point.
* Keynote. MacHack keynotes are legendary events that start at
midnight and continue for hours, with well known speakers such
as Ted Nelson, John Warnock, Steve Wozniak, Andy Ihnatko, and
numerous others. This year's lead-off keynote at ADHOC was ably
given by David Pogue, who initially seemed a little shocked by
the extreme level of interactivity traditionally shown by the
audience. But David rolled with it, and quickly drew everyone in
with his witty song parodies and jokes. His Panther tips were a
challenge to members of the audience, which tried (successfully
on a number of occasions) to tell David things he didn't know.
The second night's keynote (also at midnight) was delivered by
Apple's Steve Hayman, substituting for an ill Jordan Hubbard.
Steve drew on his experience with Apple's large education
installations (the places that have thousands of iBooks in
school systems) and years of working with Unix to give a talk
that was both hilarious and useful, in that he showed how simple
it was to use development tools like AppleScript Studio to marry
a graphical interface and a command line utility. +2 points.
* Free wireless Internet access. Although it has long been
commonplace for MacHack to offer free wireless Internet access,
this year was notable for its lack of networking problems. Steve
Yuhasz, who always runs the network, may have dodged some of them
by requiring that everyone sign up for a static IP number, thus
eliminating any confusion about who would be responsible for
network problems. So the network access was flawless this year,
and the T-1 donated by Speakeasy worked well other than a few
hours of emergency maintenance time. And although the conference
didn't specifically coordinate SubEthaEdit notetaking, I ran
it during the ADHOC Showcase, and a number of people asked
for my notes afterwards. +1 point.
* Great deals. Short of the 50 percent off any Take Control order
we gave attendees, there weren't any other deals I was aware of
this year. 0 points.
* Freebies. There were tons, and it seemed that everyone went home
with books from O'Reilly, a wide variety of t-shirts, mugs, and
stickers. The big prizes came from Nvidia, which raffled off a
number of high-end video cards. +1 point.
* Snacks. ADHOC provides not only snacks and a constant supply of
drinks but two lunches, a brunch, several pizza dinners, a banquet
dinner, and an ice cream social. The snacks and drinks have tended
toward serious junk food, which was why we donated money for
fruit, but there was no reason to go hungry. My only complaint
was that hotel food this year was below the standard of last year,
and decidedly sub-par. +1 point.
* Fun. It's almost impossible to convey how much fun people have
at ADHOC, but suffice to say that there are people who use
vacation time to come each year. To be fair, the conference might
be less fun for people who have trouble interacting socially with
geeks, but my experience as a non-programmer was still stellar.
+2 points.
* Community. The entire point of ADHOC is community, and the hotel
lobby is always occupied by attendees working on their hacks or
just hanging out and talking. Deals are made, relationships are
cemented, and the standard farewell is, "See you next year, if not
before." Younger attendees aren't just tolerated, they're welcomed
and encouraged, and perhaps the only negative I could think of in
this category is that it would be nice if more women attended.
This year was no different. +2 points.
I'd like to reiterate that these ratings should not be compared to
those I gave Macworld Expo recently; to do so would be to compare
apples and oranges. I hope the ratings give you a sense of whether
you'd like to attend next year; I'll certainly be there. And for
those regular attendees who skipped this year, we missed you, but
it was definitely your loss. See you all next year, if not before!
Managing Fonts with FontAgent Pro
---------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
In past TidBITS articles, I've talked about what a problem font
management on the Macintosh has always been, and what steps I've
taken to alleviate it on my own machine. For many years I was
strongly attached to DiamondSoft's Font Reserve, but it foundered
somewhat on the breakers of Mac OS X; initially it didn't support
many Mac OS X fonts, and Classic activation was never reliable.
I then tried Extensis's Suitcase and stayed with it happily
for a year or so, but eventually it broke against Panther, and
although a revised version was issued, I found it sluggish and
undependable. Also, by that time, Extensis had acquired Font
Reserve, ending the healthy competition between the two, and the
steam seemed to go out of the development on both products. So,
since the advent of Panther, I've kept my font management minimal,
using Apple's own Font Book as described in my ebook "Take Control
of Customizing Panther."
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04180>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06751>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06797>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07248>
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/panther/customizing.html>
Recently, however, I've put a tentative toe back into the font
management waters by taking a look at FontAgent Pro, from Insider
Software. I had tried out an earlier version of this program,
but shied away because I found it too intrusive: the installer
demanded my password, which I found suspicious; it wanted to take
control of my already installed fonts; and when it imported fonts,
it reported having performed hundreds of "repairs" to them,
without asking my permission and without explaining just what
it had done. But the current version, FontAgent Pro 2.1, is much
more user-compliant. It can manage installed fonts (except for
/System/Library/Fonts, which it leaves alone), and it can install
a startup item so that your chosen fonts will be activated
the next time you restart, but these are preferences under your
control. In general, FontAgent Pro appears simple and dependable.
<http://www.insidersoftware.com/FontAgent/fontagentpro/>
**How It Looks** -- When you use FontAgent Pro, fonts are
activated by an invisible background application, FontAgent
Activator. FontAgent Pro is thus essentially just a window for
telling FontAgent Activator what to do; your fonts are still
managed even if you quit FontAgent Pro. (This architecture is
similar to Font Reserve, where Font Reserve itself is invisible,
and the Browser is its visible face.)
FontAgent Pro thinks in terms of libraries and sets. A library
is basically a physical folder on disk where FontAgent Pro has
collected fonts. A set is a purely conceptual grouping, clumping
together some of a library's fonts, and is basically just a way to
activate or deactivate multiple fonts simultaneously. Sets can be
nested, and a font can be a member of more than one set.
The FontAgent Pro window consists of three panes. The first two
panes are almost identical - both can list fonts grouped by
library or by set, optionally grouping fonts into families - but
the first can also list all fonts alphabetically. The third pane
displays font previews that you can cycle through and compare.
The panes can be resized; the first and third panes can also be
completely hidden.
Using the window is simple. The first two panes are outlines,
where fonts may appear clumped hierarchically by font family,
set, or library. Each item in the outline has two icons next to
it, indicating whether it is activated and whether it is shared.
(I describe font sharing later in this article.) Click an icon
to toggle the state for that item (meaning that font, if the item
is a font, or all subordinate fonts, if the item is a font family,
set, or library); or, select an item and click a button in the
window's toolbar. Sets can be created with a button on the
toolbar, and fonts can be moved or copied into sets by dragging
within a pane or from one pane to another, in a delightfully
clean and intuitive fashion. The hierarchy's outline can also
be controlled using decent keyboard navigation: you can move
the selection up and down, you can open and close a "folder,"
and you can jump to an item by typing the start of its name.
**What It Does** -- As I've said in past articles, my font
management needs are fairly simple. I don't use large numbers of
fonts, I don't manage multiple jobs requiring specific fonts, and
I'm certainly not a publishing or prepress shop. That said, let me
describe my basic font needs and how FontAgent Pro meets them:
(1) I am massively confused about what fonts I have. The
difficulty is greatly exacerbated by the fact that many of my
fonts on Mac OS X are in suitcases, which don't behave like
folders the way they did in System 7 through Mac OS 9, so I can't
readily see inside them. When you hand a font over to FontAgent
Pro (which you can do by dragging font files or entire folders
onto its window), it is copied into the FontAgent Pro library
folder. Fonts that live in suitcases (e.g., because they are
bitmaps, or because they are the old style of TrueType font with
bitmaps) are broken up and created anew, one font per suitcase;
and fonts are arranged by families in folders named for letters of
the alphabet. Also, FontAgent Pro checks to make sure that bitmaps
and Postscript files form complete font families. Thus you know at
a glance, in the Finder as well as in FontAgent Pro, what fonts
you have.
So, for example, when I handed FontAgent Pro three Garamond bitmap
suitcases and a bunch of Postscript font files, these were put in
the ITC Garamond subfolder of the "G" folder, and the suitcases
were reconstituted as 14 suitcases with names like Garamond Book,
Garamond BookCondensed, and so forth.
(2) I like to be able to activate fonts in Classic, from within
Mac OS X. The reason is that I still occasionally run a Classic-
only program, such as FrameMaker, and when I do, I want to
activate certain fonts. I could just install the necessary fonts
in my Classic Fonts folder, thus making them available to all
Classic programs; but then they would be active in Mac OS X all
the time as well. (Of course, I could prevent that using Font
Book; but it's confusing for me to use both Font Book and a third-
party program.) FontAgent Pro has the capability to activate in
Classic applications whatever Classic-compatible fonts it has
activated under Mac OS X.
(3) I have more than one computer, and coordinating fonts between
them is something of a nightmare. If I have a Workgroup Edition
license for FontAgent Pro, I can stop worrying about this, because
as long as two computers are on the same local network, they can
share fonts. Let's say machine A has the fonts in question in its
FontAgent Pro library. In machine A's copy of FontAgent Pro, I
click the "share" icons for those fonts. In machine B's copy of
FontAgent Pro, I switch to the Sharing tab of the second pane, and
presto, thanks to the magic of Rendezvous, machine A is listed, as
if it were a set consisting of all the shared fonts. So, still on
machine B, I activate them just as if they really were on machine
B, and now I can use them in all applications just like any other
font. The whole process is delightfully easy, and eerily cool.
**What It Needs** -- Even though my font requirements are minimal,
FontAgent Pro and I crossed swords in a few places. This is a list
of suggestions more than of criticisms; they are places where I
felt FontAgent Pro fell short or behaved oddly, or wasn't being as
helpful as it might. They are not serious enough to make me not
use FontAgent Pro, but they are the sort of thing that might keep
me looking for other font management alternatives, and they
certainly could matter to some users.
FontAgent Pro gives no information about fonts it is not managing.
This means it doesn't tell you what fonts are activated through
the system, and it doesn't tell you whether activating a font
through FontAgent might cause some sort of conflict with a system-
based font. Also, it doesn't prevent possible conflicts within
itself; it lets you import two non-identical fonts with the same
name and activate them, even though the system won't distinguish
them. (Contrast Suitcase, which shows you _all_ active fonts and
warns of possible conflicts when you activate a font.) Although it
can be set to "verify fonts," FontAgent Pro still fails to warn of
a font's internal oddities; for example, I have some old TrueType
fonts that used to work, but under Mac OS X they don't (in one of
them, for example, typing "A" gives an "L"), and FontAgent Pro
isn't getting me any closer to understanding why. Plus, I found
that if I imported a suitcase containing multiple TrueType
variants of a single font - such as Palatino, Palatino Bold,
and Palatino Italic - FontAgent Pro failed to list the variants.
(Contrast Font Book, which does list them.)
The simplicity of FontAgent Pro's interface is perhaps carried a
bit too far. You can't start with a font and ask what sets it
belongs to. You can search for fonts, limiting the All Fonts pane
to fonts whose name contains the letters you type; but then there
is no way to learn that you're seeing a filtered list, and there's
no button to cancel the filtering.
There is no way to export information about sets. This means
that if you have FontAgent Pro on two machines, you can't easily
configure them with identical sets. (Contrast Font Reserve, which
lets you export and import set configurations.) The font preview
feature is not as useful as it might be, because with a Unicode
font you are not shown the region of the font that's important.
(Contrast Font Book, which shows a Cyrillic alphabet for a chiefly
Cyrillic Unicode font and a Hebrew alphabet for a chiefly Hebrew
Unicode font.)
The main FontAgent Pro window suffers from a frequent Mac OS X
problem: its buttons are enabled even when the window is not
frontmost. This means you can click the window in the background,
intending to switch to it, and accidentally activate some button,
perhaps deleting a font from a set without realizing it. I also
noticed that if the Preferences window is already open but hidden
behind another window, choosing the Preferences menu item does not
activate it, which is mystifying because it looks as if nothing
has happened.
Finally I should mention FontAgent Pro's font activation
feature, which is intended to allow a document in any application
to activate needed fonts as it is opened, provided those fonts
are in a FontAgent Pro library. Plug-ins to enable this feature
are provided for InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXPress;
in other programs it's just supposed to work automatically.
But it didn't work for me with a Microsoft Word document
containing several specialized language fonts. This is not
a deal breaker for me, but some users probably depend on
this feature.
**Conclusions** -- FontAgent Pro is simple and easy to use. It
activates fonts quickly and reliably and without bogging down the
system. Its single window is clean and intuitive. The capability
to make sets within sets is very nice, the multiple libraries
feature is useful for distinguishing multiple copies of a font
which would otherwise conflict (a frequent problem in publishing
environments), and the Rendezvous-based font sharing is a joy.
Activation of fonts in Classic programs works fine. All these
features could easily justify use of FontAgent Pro. On the other
hand, FontAgent Pro doesn't warn of font conflicts and internal
font problems, and so I still feel that I'm groping my way
ignorantly through a mysterious world of fonts, and that FontAgent
Pro isn't doing as much to light my way as my imaginary ideal
font management program would do.
FontAgent Pro 2.1.1 costs $90, or $140 for the Workgroup Edition.
It requires Mac OS X 10.2.8, or 10.3.2 or later. A free 30-day
trial version is available as a 2.8 MB download. (Mac OS 9 and
Windows versions are also available.)
<http://www.insidersoftware.com/downloads/fontagent.html>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/26-Jul-04
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The second URL below each thread description points to the
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/>
**Lightning taking out Ethernet anecdotes** -- Readers share their
own electrifying experiences with lightning and computer hardware.
(6 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2278>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/142>
**Comments on Word 2004** -- Readers continue to comment on
Microsoft's newest word processor, including embedded fonts
in documents and PDF output. (22 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2257>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/123>
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