The New Face of Font Management and Repair
Font Agent Pro has been dubbed the new face of font management and
repair for its innovative approach to font organization, optimization,
repair, and management. By providing all of this functionality in a
single package, Insider has combined a number of diverse and often
daunting tasks into a simple, unified solution that packs tremendous
power yet is incredibly simple to use.
With a few clicks, it repairs or eliminates corrupt fonts, partial
and unmatched fonts, duplicate fonts, unnecessary point sizes, and
builds optimized, organized font libraries. It enables users to build
multiple font libraries and cascading font sets, automatically
activate fonts, preview fonts in various typefaces, and save system
resources and time by opening only the fonts required for current
projects. In addition, FontAgent Pro can display fonts in WYSIWYG mode
and offers a blazingly fast search engine making any font just a few
keystrokes away. Users can instantly create and print a font book
showing different text and styles, and the amazing FontPlayer(TM) lets
users display and preview text in context, even permitting
modification of font colors and backgrounds, point sizes, and more.
FontAgent Pro also offers the most extensive array of automatic
font activation capabilities of any product on the market. Not only
does it automatically activate fonts in Panther-compliant
applications, it also offers special plug-ins for Adobe InDesign,
Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, and Adobe Photoshop.
“Fontez-Vous?” — What Else is New?
FontAgent Pro WE was developed in Cocoa to take full advantage of
Mac OS X technologies. It demonstrates the incredible power of
Rendezvous, Apple’s open, standards-based networking technology that
automatically discovers and connects Macs and other electronic devices
on a network, allowing them to collaborate over IP without any user
configuration. Insider’s Fontez-Vous(TM) technology enables users to
display the fonts that are available on that user’s computer. The font
is ready for use by any other Fontez-Vous participant with just a
mouse click.
Cascading sets have been added so users can logically organize
fonts by client, project, etc. They work the way users are accustomed
to, permitting a Finder-like hierarchical organization.
An SQL database has been written to provide the sheer power and
speed necessary for an industrial strength application. Launch times
are incredibly fast and new data algorithms only read data as
required, resulting in much lower memory requirements, the ability to
handle huge font collections, and crash protection to protect the font
database from damage. In addition, users can view essential facts
about their fonts and can even add their own comments to the database.
A new activation daemon allows automatic font activation without
requiring the user to launch the FontAgent Pro application. FontAgent
Pro will track the font activation and deactivation so the application
always displays the correct state.
Bob Leeds, Insider Software’s CMO, heralded the new release,
stating, “FontAgent Pro WE is the perfect solution for design
professionals who need to share their font resources, but don’t want
to waste time on server administration, configuration, and
maintenance. Our Fontez-Vous technology is based on Apple’s Rendezvous
and works simply and smartly, just as one has come to expect from
Apple products.”
“Rendezvous uses industry standard networking protocols and zero
configuration technology to automatically discover and connect devices
over any IP network, including Ethernet and 802.11 wireless networks,”
said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer
Relations. “With the support of Rendezvous, Insider Software’s
FontAgent Pro Workgroup Edition allows users to quickly and easily
share fonts with each other.”
System Requirements
FontAgent Pro WE requires Mac OS X version 10.2 or later, 3MB of
disk space, and 7MB of memory.
Pricing and Availability
FontAgent Pro 2.0 is priced at a suggested retail of $99.95
($89.95 for electronic download). FontAgent Pro WE is priced at a
suggested retail of $149.95 ($139.95 for electronic download). Both
versions will be on sale at Macworld Expo.
