The (paid) Professional version lets you create a library of as many fonts as you want. Free version is limited to 2500 fonts, which is still a good amount.
You can customize your view so that you can arrange the "Information" panel with all the technical details of the font, e.g. no. of glyphs/characters (often different!), all OpenType features in the selected font, exact location of the font file, etc.
Fonts don't have to be installed for use, you can also load them. This way they're available for use in all programs, but won't stay 'installed' after a reboot.
Most features of the paid Standard and Professional versions are available in the Free version. The main difference is the number of fonts allowed in the library (2500 vs. 10,000 in Standard and unlimited in Professional).
MainType easily allows you to view all the special characters and glyphs available in a font and copy and paste them into other programs. Definitely the easiest font manager to do this!
You know that there's always too little space. You can customize your "view" so that on the second monitor you can see a big window only with the glyphs of the selected font in the main window.
All the organization of the panels is simple, clear, easy to change and adapt to everyone needs. Simply a great interface with everything is easy to find, organize and use. All the panels are re-sizeable! And the dark skin is beautiful and very relaxing interface for long work sessions!
As some type faces only have caps, you can test my phrases by writing one in all caps and one in upper/lower on the same screen so you can see the contrast, if any. For visual purposes, you can capture a test along with font name using a screen capture program, then compare them all before committing on the one/s that fit the best in the design.
In terms of font management, this beats what Adobe has to offer.
MAinType adapts splendidly to 25:9 screen ratio and the work is even more easy, because the columns of the font list not only can be moved, but resized to show larger, and better, and all the panels are beautifully resized. Fantastic.
Yes and no to this. For the average non-pro user, it is free - but admittedly those seldom need a true font manager. Also, the company is very clear and open about the limitations of the free version (When compared to others.). That software distribution platforms often gain from promotion trial and restricted software as free isn't Hi Logics fault.
The program is good for moving font files, but it would save me time if this could be automated, for instance, it would be nice to be able to automatically sort font files into folders based on family.
FontBase's main pro is its main drawback - not needing to install fonts is great, but opening files using fonts not installed may not show them properly unless FontBase is also opened.
You will have to manually grab the font folders from your library. As the fonts aren't actually installed locally, Adobe software can't see the font nor export it with your project.
When dragging font and font folders into the library you will still need to search for them and manually activate. The ability to search and sorting fonts is very limited.
Expensive price to pay for a license the user has already paid for. Aside from being a standalone Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool focused on fonts, it's highly used purely as plugins for Adobe products (which are similarly also well known for high cost licensing & upgrades) .
No longer are you able to have Suitcase select the BEST. It constantly now warns you. Gets annoying OK a useless, multiple warning dialog boxes that ALL previous versions would allow you to have Suitcase PICK the best for you.. NO LONGER AUTO ACTIVATE when you have to verify almost every font getting activated.
Eagle includes smart folders you can configure to hide/show content dependent on custom parameters like color, tags, category, folder, etc. Eagle pulls a sample of colors from every image you upload and you can easily filter and search by color.
You can import from files on your PC or from online galleries like Pinterest, etc. On import Eagle pulls metadata like the URL the image was saved from.
you won't have to download all the fonts and make the font list a total mess, you can activate when you need the font, and deactivate it when it's not in use to maintain a neat list.
Eagle sorts files in essentially a custom folder hierarchy called an 'eaglepack'. Everything is stored locally, but you can sync to the cloud by uploading the eagle folder to the cloud.