Unique Technology that Ensures Correct Activation

Built on Insider’s unique FontSavant™ technology, the new release ensures that FontAgent Pro’s auto-activation manager always selects the right font in your documents—not just a close match or one that has the same name.

FontAgent Pro gives you full control over the font auto-activation process. It begins by detecting the most subtle differences among fonts to deliver the most accurate font activation possible. When no installed fonts match one required by a document, it provides a list of alternate fonts in your collection—with a relevancy ranking that shows how closely they match the font your document requested—so you can choose the best font. You can also activate a preferred font format (e.g., Type 1, OpenType, TrueType) automatically.

Availability and Pricing

Release 4.140 of FontAgent Pro is free to users who have already licensed FontAgent Pro 4. The product retails for $99.95 for new purchasers and is $49.95 for registered users of FontAgent Pro 3 and earlier. Cross-grades from qualifying competitive products are also available. Existing users and those wanting a 30-day trial version of FontAgent Pro can download the latest release from:

http://www.insidersoftware.com/downloads/FontAgentPro4.dmg

FontAgent Pro’s competitors claim their font managers are compatible with CS5, yet they also tell you that they have not released auto-activation support for it.  What’s that mean? At Insider we are providing you with the tools you need to stay productive today, not asking you to wait and see.

So, even this late in the game, FontAgent Pro is still the only game in town if you want full compatibility with Adobe Creative Suite 5. And from what we have been hearing, it could easily be that way for a while.

To download the FontAgent Pro CS5 auto-activation plug-ins click here.

To learn more about how Insider can help you streamline your creative process, including the industry-leading line of FontAgent Pro products, visit our site at www.insidersoftware.com.

Comprehensive Font Management

Using the TeamServer and FontAgent Pro, you can control and manage fonts across your organization as you:
•  Centralize and share fonts for consistency and control
•  Install and remove fonts on user machines automatically
•  Eliminate corrupt, duplicate and mismatched fonts
•  Enforce consistent font usage across all users and projects
•  Display stunning previews and comparisons of fonts
•  Play slide shows of your fonts
•  Find fonts—locally and over the Internet—by properties or topic
•  Print font books with full color control
•  Auto-activate fonts in your favorite design applications

Easy Installation and Care

FontAgent Pro TeamServer is designed for everyone — no IT experience required!  You can install our server in as little as ten minutes and administer it from any networked Mac, and then you can:
•  Support local and remote users
•  Backup your fonts without taking your server offline
•  Manage font licenses and track their usage
•  Stop users from installing unauthorized fonts

No New Hardware Required!

FontAgent Pro TeamServer does not require dedicated server hardware and runs on a variety of Mac systems including dual G4, MacMini, Mac Pro and XServe systems.

Make Insider Part of Your Team

Been debating a font-server solution for your organization?  Take a look at how FontAgent Pro TeamServer brings consistency and control to your users and documents and projects — at a very attractive price. Have more questions? Just ask. We can help you decide if TeamServer is right for you and we can get you up and running fast.

Activate the Right Fonts Every Time

Using FontSavant technology, the plug-ins allow you to not only activate the exact font used in the creation of a document, but allow you to activate a different font if the wrong font was used in the creation of the document. FontAgent Pro’s conflict resolver makes the auto-activation process completely transparent, giving you total control over the activation process.

Support for Mac OS X Versions from Classic to Snow Leopard

FontAgent Pro auto-activation plug-ins can be used on systems running Mac OS X Panther (V10.3.9), Tiger (10.4), Leopard (10.5), and Snow Leopard (10.6) — as well as in Classic applications.

Quick Download and New, Easy Installer

To download the plug-ins, click here. The disk image arrives with aliases to your Adobe Creative Suite 5 application Plug-ins folders so all you need to do is install the software is to first close out of your Adobe CS5 applications, then drag the plug-ins to the appropriate folder alias — no navigating to your Application folders in the Finder required!

We hope those of you moving to CS5 find these new FontAgent Pro plug-ins helpful. If you have any problems installing or using them, please let us know. We’re here to help.

How FontAgent Pro can help you “go green” and save money printing

When you import fonts into FontAgent Pro, it gathers all kinds of information including the “weight” of the font. The weight is calculated by the height and the thickness of the downstrokes of the font. By using the Font Data view in FontAgent Pro, you are able to quickly sort your fonts by weight.

FontAgent Pro makes it very easy to see what the lightest fonts are in your collection and you can start saving money on toner right away switching your documents to one of these fonts.

Money-saving “Smart Sets”

You can also use FontAgent Pro to create a “Smart Set” of lighter fonts.

Click the Find button in the toolbar to launch the Smart Search Window. Then set these search to find all fonts less than a certain weight value. You can experiment with this number to include all but the lightest fonts or to just exclude the heaviest fonts. A value of -0.4 would be a very light font such as Marquisette. A value of .8 represents a very heavy font, such as Bodoni Poster.

Then, after setting your search criteria you can select the Save button and have the results added to a Smart Set. This Smart Set will dynamically update its contents when you add more fonts to your collection. So if you add more light fonts to your collection, FontAgent Pro will update the set automatically. It’s set-it-and-forget-it font organization at its finest.

FontAgent Pro Plus offers several toner saving fonts

FontAgent Pro Plus comes with a collection of 750 OpenType fonts from Bitstream for Macintosh and Windows, including the fonts mentioned earlier in this article. Within this collection there are many fonts that leave a smaller toner footprint, so you can start saving resources right away.

For more information about how FontAgent Pro, and Insider Software’s other font management tools can save you money and streamline you font workflow, visit www.insidersoftware.com.

Real-Time Font-Usage Manager
FontAgent Pro Server 4 now tracks font distribution and usage in real-time–an industry first. It shows which users have access to libraries and fonts, and when they activate and deactivate them. You can even use your favorite scripting language to export usage data into various file formats, and then use Excel, report scripts or asset managers to analyze and report on font usage and ensure compliance with font-license agreements–and be prepared for licensing audits at any time!

Live Font Server Backup
We’ve also added live backup services to FontAgent Pro Server 4. It backs up its fonts, users and groups without locking out users… something Extensis UTS doesn’t do. Better yet, you can restore a server to a previous state with just a few clicks. The backup manager lets you set the backup times, and you can also add font-server archiving into your existing backup scripts. Another important point: you can backup your font database to any networked drive–again unlike Extensis, which seems to force backup to only local drives, a practice which at best seems dangerous.

Failover Services Add to Lead in Multi-Server Environments
FontAgent Pro clients now include failover services that allow them to automatically connect to alternative servers when their primary font server is unavailable. Used in conjunction with FontAgent Pro’s server replication, these failover services make FontAgent Pro the clear choice in multi-server environments.

Enhanced Directory Services, Security and Permissions
We’ve also added faster Active Directory, Open Directory and LDAP synchronization to FontAgent Pro Server 4, along with improved support for nested groups, standalone users, keychain-based password protection and non-standard directory schemas. You can now identify group and font administrators who can upload fonts, create users and groups, edit licenses, upload and edit sets, upload and edit font libraries, assign fonts and users to groups and view font usage information–and allow IT administrators to maintain control of the font server itself.

Kerberos Single-Sign-on Support
Using Kerberos in your organization? FontAgent Pro clients now check if users have previously logged in via Kerberos. If so, they are automatically authenticated to FontAgent Pro Server. If not, FontAgent Pro asks them to enter their username and password. It’s that easy.

For More Information
We’re excited about FontAgent Pro Server 4, and we hope you are as well. If you have questions or would like more information, just let us know. We’ll get you the Inside Scoop.

How TypeTrax Works
As designers import InDesign projects into Cumulus, TypeTrax automatically imports all the fonts and files required. Users can preview fonts and their metadata with a few clicks. When users check-in an InDesign project, Cumulus and TypeTrax automatically preflight the job to ensure that all required fonts, images and resource files are included. TypeTrax detects differences between fonts resident in projects and on users’ systems. In addition, users can track all checked-in revisions, so they can easily revert to an earlier version of a project.

What It Takes to Get Started with TypeTrax
TypeTrax for Cumulus 8 is available immediately and includes a copy of FontAgent Pro 4. TypeTrax requires an Apple Macintosh running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) or later and Adobe InDesign Creative Suite 4, as well as access to a server running Canto Cumulus 8.0 or 8.1.

A TypeTrax server license costs USD $1,995 and includes three user licenses. Additional user licenses cost $195 each. It is available for purchase from Insider and Moksa, as well as from Canto and selected Canto resellers worldwide.

AppleScript is an English-like language you can use to write scripts that automate the actions of your Mac and the applications that run on it. When you want your Mac applications to work together in harmony, AppleScript becomes the lingua franca that makes them all talk to each other. Using it, you and your applications become a lot more productive.

If your project workflow uses fonts, FontAgent Pro is the font management tool you need to automate your workflow. While old versions of Suitcase supported AppleScript, the current versions of Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2 and Extensis Universal Type Server (UTS) client do not, nor does FontExplorer X.

How you can use AppleScript

There are lots of things you can automate with FontAgent Pro scripts. One of the most useful scripts imports and activates fonts when you drag a folder of fonts onto an AppleScript application.

Here is an example of how this might be useful:

It is common for prepress service providers to receive many different jobs from different clients during the day. Service providers usually receive fonts in a Package or in a folder created by a Collect for Output command. These fonts need to be imported into FontAgent Pro and activated to open the application file in the project.

Using AppleScript and FontAgent Pro, you can create a droplet application where you can drag the folder of files provided by a client (which in this example is named by job number) and the fonts contained will be automatically imported into a unique library with the same name as the folder. The script also deactivates all other fonts, and then activates the library you just imported so you can be sure you are using the exact fonts provided by the client. Without doing this, you cannot be sure that the job will rip and print as expected. After running this script, you are ready to launch whatever application your client used to create the application file and proceed.

If you just want to get the script and start rolling, you can download it here and unzip it on your desktop and you are good to go.

The script is provided as is, but if you have any questions or suggestions, you can contact us at Insider Technical Support.

The script

The text for the script is below:

If you copy and paste the text into Script Editor, you may get a syntax error when you attempt to compile the script. This is most likely because the quotation marks in the text are smart quotation marks or curly quotes as opposed to the straight dumb quotation marks. Just do a find-and-replace with the dumb quotes and you can edit the script from there, or just download the script from the link provided above.

How to use the script

Simply take a folder of fonts and give it a name. This example uses a folder created from a package-for-output InDesign CS 4 project, and it’s named with a five-digit project number.

Drag the folder onto the FAPDragActivator icon on your desktop and let the script do its stuff.

From the screenshot below, you can see that the fonts were imported into FontAgent Pro (in a library named after the folder) and are indicated active with a green activation sphere. Also notice all the other fonts in the collection are deactivated.

The fun doesn’t have to stop here. This script can be integrated into a larger script that further automates your workflow. This script could activate the fonts and could hand the document off to InDesign or QuarkXpress to print a soft proof using a preset print setting.

In future posts we will talk more about using AppleScript to automate font-related workflows. Stay tuned to the Insider Blog.

A little about font caches

Font caches are data files that help your OS and applications speed the display of text on your screen. You can open and examine most cache files with a text editor because they often just list font files or their properties. Mac OS has its own cache files, as do applications in software suites such as Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXPress, Apple iWork and Microsoft Office.

Every time you activate or deactivate a font, these cached lists need to be updated or activated fonts might not appear available in many applications. In addition, when the updates don’t occur, the cache files easily become corrupt or damaged–or simply fall out of sync with their associated applications–and cause additional application instability.

It is difficult to tell if a cache is corrupt simply by looking at the file. Often the first indication is bizarre or unexpected behavior in your applications. So how can we go about solving this pesky issue?

In comes Smasher

Smasher provides preventive font maintenance for your Mac OS X design applications and acts as a companion technology to your existing font manager, such as FontAgent Pro. Smasher is an essential utility for anyone who uses a lot of fonts because it clears your font and application caches on a regular, scheduled basis. So you can install Smasher, set its preferences to clear your caches at every reboot, and say goodbye to cache problems for good.

Every time you reboot, Smasher removes old cache files. Then, as Mac OS X and your applications launch, they create new cache files that better reflect the activation status of the fonts on your system. So fonts show up in your application menus as they should, and you are better  protected against display problems, garbled fonts, strange font substitution, printing problems and application crashes.

Smasher also performs routine maintenance on CUPS print spool files and other temporary system files to keep your Mac running smoothly. To learn more about Smasher or to download a demo of this handy utility, click here.

And don’t forget that you can always access the Insider Knowledgebase from the Support section of the Insider website. It’s packed with technical tips and tricks that make using Insider products even easier.

Thanks for visiting us here at Insider. We hope to see you back here for The Inside Scoop on a regular basis. In the meanwhile, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for inside information that you’ll find stimulating and helpful. See you soon.