For many of us, waiting for Diamondsoft to release an OS X version of Font Reserve has been a long wait. It's worth the wait. It is now much easier to deal with one Font Reserve than with your fonts located in OS X's 4 separate font folders (System, Library, User, and Classic). There are a few glitches, and several aspects of dealing with OS X fonts that have yet to be resolved (but soon will be), but overall, Font Reserve is still the best Font Management program out there.

When Apple first introduced the general public to the word "font" in 1984, they had very modest expectations as to how it would be used. The first Macs could only have a very limited number of fonts installed, but that was OK as it was a major hassle getting fonts in or out of the operating system. Then, Apple introduced the Font/DA Mover which made life wonderful (it's all relative, right?). Finally, programs like Suitcase and FontJuggler provided wonderful support to deal with many fonts. However, neither of these font-handling programs, nor Apple, could begin to consider what would happen if there were not hundreds of fonts, but thousands of fonts. Dealing with hundreds of fonts and handling thousands of fonts are two different issues.

The problem was that while either of these programs did an excellent job of easily adding (or removing) fonts to a system, neither provided the user with full control of their own fonts. Consider: how do you deal with the same font face (say Times) from True Type fonts (better for screen use) to Type 1 font (better for print) with the same font faces or the same font type but from different foundries? Which do you use, Times, Times, or Times? What is an efficient way to view a font before installing it in your system? How do you collect all the fonts for one job together for easy and fast installation AND how do you start them with little concern that you will end up with many many fonts open days later because you forgot to "turn them off?"

With Font Reserve, it's been a snap since version 1, and now with version 3 one can not only deal with ALL their fonts, but one can do it with all the Font Folders in OS X. Don't be concerned about using Classic apps with Font Reserve 3 because you do get a little item that automatically turns on all the fonts you have open in X when you start Classic. In addition, aside from the OS X version of FR, the CD also supplies FR for use with OS 8.5 - 9.2. More on this later.

Font Reserve 3 for OS 8.5 - 9.2 looks (and acts) like earlier versions:

And Font Reserve 3 for OS X has all the nice views that one expects with applications adapted for OS X:

It's interesting that the same version should have such a difference in appearance, but there are differences such as the "Find" icon is what was before the Filter icon (or Filter menu -> Quick Filter Editor) and "Import" and "Export" have been moved out entirely into the File menu. It's rare to see icons being removed from programs, but the navigation is greatly improved with this change.

Other aspects of the interface haven't changed, such as the alphabet listings of your fonts, and that Command-mousing down on a font shows the font's face in 72 points. Seeing what a font that isn't active looks like is very easy to do.

Font Reserve provides a slew of templates for printing out catalogs of your fonts so you can be economical and have multiple fonts on one page or many examples of one font per page--and a variety of options in between. One feature that is missing but would be very nice is for after printing out all your fonts, it would be good if these fonts could be tagged in some format so that subsequent (non-printed) fonts could easily be located and printed in a separate run.

Similarly, activating a font, deactivating, or only temporarily activating a font is as simple as Command-mousing down on a little dot on the left side of the font name or clicking on the appropriate icon on the left side of the program's window as seen on the top two screen shots above.

Admittedly, for those using OS 8.5 - 9.2, there is (currently) no reason to move up to version 3 from version 2.6. Alternatively, there are (currently) only three features of version 3 that have any significance to OS X: First and foremost, Font Reserve runs in OS X. For what it's worth, this is the best place to start.

A new feature with the OS X version of version 3 is the System Font Handler. What this does is let you remove fonts that are not important system fonts from the (3) other Font folders outside of the System folder. This is an important feature when you keep in mind that it is very easy to have 5 versions of the same font on your computer in OS X. The same font can exist in the System, Library, User, Classic, and in Font Reserve's own database. While Apple let this happen, not all applications think it's a very good idea and some programs may crash because you have multiple copies of the same font "on." Since all you need is one, Font Reserve lets you easily pare the extra ones away in a controlled fashion. (This feature is not available in the OS 8.5 - 9.2 version.).

Additionally, there is "ClassicActivator," a self running little application that takes all the fonts you have active in OS X and makes them available when Classic is started. To use this, all one has to do is to turn on 'fonts in Classic' in the Font Reserve Settings. That's it. It seems like one should have to place it somewhere or double-click in some fashion, but no, it's not necessary.

There are a few glitches: Occasionally when FR starts up, a message is presented that FR failed to start up at startup. This requires one to manually start Font Reserve up via the "Font Reserve Settings." This always works. According to Font Reserve, this is caused by a glitch with OS X and the way that the automatic login feature functions.

In addition, if you have FR 3 installed on your OS 9 and you start up in Classic (and you have ClassicActivator set up to run), you will get a message that Font Reserve quit while starting up because there was a copy of Font Reserve already running. The copy already running was the ClassicActivator. Currently the only option is to either close and ignore the warning, or to remove the alias of Font Reserve located in the Startup folder in your OS 9 System Folder. But this means you would have to remember to manually start up Font Reserve every time you start up on OS 9. I opt for the "ignore the warning" plan myself.

The last level of disappointment should soon be eliminated once version 3.1 is released--hopefully within several months from the release of this review. Currently Font Reserve 3 cannot "see" Mac OS System Fonts, seen in your Font Folders and identified as "dfont" fonts. Also upcoming with version 3.1 is the ability to see and utilize OpenType fonts. (See OpenType fonts at Adobe.com.). These fonts will then be easily used in pre-OS X system as long as the program (such as Photoshop 6+ or InDesign 1+) knows how to use them. Lastly, Font Reserve 3.1 will also be able to utilize Window's TrueType fonts in OS X and double-byte fonts.

Currently with version 3, a plug-in is provided so that users or Quark will have automatic "turning on" of fonts located in a Quark document that otherwise are not turned on in FR. With version 3.1, plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign will also be included.

Regrettably, Diamondsoft no longer provides a paper manual and one is left with the pdf located on the CD. The manual is OK and (most) of the information is there, but using the System Font Handler the first time is somewhat nerve racking with the information provided. As there is only the pdf, it would have been nice if Diamondsoft had created links in the pdf so one could click on a section in the table of contents and the reader would be automatically taken there. Similarly, this should be available with the index as well. In addition, there are a variety of modifier key options and tips that probably could be placed on (at least) a cardboard foldout or at best a separate pdf. But these are small complaints.

Font Reserve is a great option now, and it will be a fantastic option once version 3.1 is released. If I were to grade Font Reserve as it stands I'd have to give it a rating of 4, but with the free upgrade of 3.1 due to come out shortly, I will be recommending Font Reserve with a rating of 5. I very very seldom provide ratings based on "promised" results, but Diamondsoft has been so reliable, and their programming has been so strong (version 1 of FR still runs quite well on OS 9--try that with Suitcase of FontJuggler), I feel confident with this review. By the way, if you purchased version 2.6, version 3 is a free upgrade.

Available at the Applelinks Store

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