How Font Box Works

How Font Box Works - the short version

Font Box performs a variety of housecleaning chores and runs a variety of technical checks to ensure your font library is ready when you need it.

When you run Font Box, it does all this for you:

Probes Disk Drives for Fonts
Verifies Font Integrity
Eliminates Duplicate Fonts
Fixes Unmatched Fonts
Removes Bitmapped Sizes Over 12 Point
Fixes Font ID Conflicts
Creates New Suitcases
Creates an Organized Library
Cleans Up Old Fonts
Reports Font Status

Font Box should be part of your system's regular maintenance and preventive care. Font Box saves you time wasted searching for lost fonts, fixing font substitution problems, and chasing down output-related issues.

The free Analysis Edition analyzes your fonts and displays all the problems, however, you need to register Font Box to fix all the problems automatically.

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How Font Box Works - the long version

1 Probes Disk Drives for Fonts

Font Box scours your disk drives and finds all the fonts located anywhere on the drives. This frees you from having to locate or open your fonts manually and eliminates the risk that you'll overlook any font files. Font Box can analyze multiple drives and create a complete, trouble-free set of fonts from all the fonts on all the drives.

The Font Box Network Edition can locate, analyze and repair fonts on multiple Macs on your network, create a new library of all your fonts, and synchronize them across all your machines. The Network Edition is particularly handy for designers, service bureaus, and work group managers with large font collections or large numbers of Macintosh workstations.

2 Verifies Font Integrity

Corrupt fonts are a major cause of system and application crashes. When your Macintosh crashes, files that are open can become corrupted. Since bitmapped font files in suitcases are opened every time your Macintosh starts up, they are obvious targets for corruption. Unfortunately, a corrupt font leads to more crashes and more corrupt fonts. And without Font Box, corrupt font files are very hard to detect and repair.

Font Box performs several consistency checks to ensure the integrity of all your fonts. If it finds a problem, Font Box attempts to repair the font or alerts you to delete the problem font and reinstall it. By repairing corrupt fonts, Font Box improves the stability of your Macintosh and your applications.

3 Eliminates Duplicate Fonts

Duplicate fonts waste disk space and cause font ID conflicts that result in annoying error messages and inconsistent output. Fonts may be duplicated as they are added and removed from your hard drive. In fact, reinstalling your Mac OS System 7 software or applications can cause duplicates.

Font duplication also occurs when you have both TrueType and Type 1 versions of a font on your hard drive. If an application uses a TrueType font one time and a Type 1 font another, the appearance of fonts on your display and printer output may be inconsistent.

4 Fixes Unmatched Fonts

Type 1 fonts require both a bitmapped and PostScript font to display and print correctly. When fonts are moved, bitmapped fonts may become separated from their corresponding PostScript fonts. An unmatched bitmapped font displays correctly only in its installed sizes, but does not print properly. And an unmatched PostScript font can never be referenced and only wastes disk space. Font Box identifies all these unmatched, orphaned fonts and ensures that bitmapped fonts display correctly, ends unexpected font substitution, and saves disk space.

5 Removes Bitmapped Sizes Over 12 Point

If you use Adobe Type Manager, it automatically renders all fonts on your screen from only one bitmapped point size. However, ATM does not always accurately display fonts in small point sizes. Font designers may provide small font bitmaps to help in these situations. Therefore, Font Box allows you to remove all bitmapped sizes over 12 point to reduce disk space and memory requirements.

6 Fixes Font ID Conflicts

Font ID numbers are used internally by Mac OS to uniquely identify all open fonts. Therefore, each font must have a unique ID number when it loads. Unfortunately, there are more fonts than ID numbers, resulting in unexpected and endless font conflicts.

Font Box renumbers conflicting Font IDs to ensure that all your fonts open properly. Because Font IDs are not unique to a particular font, modern applications refer to font names rather than font numbers, so renumbering your fonts has no undesirable effects.

7 Creates New Suitcases

After Font Box identifies all your font problems, it creates a clean font library organized the way you want. In your new font library, Font Box creates new suitcase files containing entire font families labeled with the font's name for easy identification. In addition, Font Box optionally puts a suffix on the font file identifying it as either TrueType (.tt) or Type 1 (.t1) and moves loose bitmapped fonts into their proper suitcases.

8 Creates an Organized Library

Fonts should be logically organized so you can recognize them at a glance, add new fonts to your library quickly, open existing fonts easily, and locate specific fonts for sending to service bureaus.

Font Box gives you a variety of ways to organize your new font library. Specifically, you can:

Place all fonts in a new Fonts folder in the System Folder, or in the Font Box library, if you have a small font library.
Organize fonts in alphabetical sub-folders if you have a large font library and want to access fonts by their name.
Organize fonts by parent folder if you classify fonts by other than font name.
Organize fonts by current location if you are confident that all your font files are properly organized and that you want to maintain their current locations.
Place each font in its own separate folder.

9 Cleans Up Old Fonts

After Font Box creates your new font library, your old fonts may still be strewn across your disk drives. At your choice, Font Box moves all existing fonts into an Old Fonts folder or, optionally, to the Trash.

10 Reports Font Status

As a final step, Font Box generates reports that you can view on screen, print or save to disk for importing into a word processor. Font Box produces the following reports:

A font inventory before Font Box creates and moves any fonts
The font problems Font Box detected
A font inventory after Font Box finishes building your new font library

The inventory reports can be sorted alphabetically by font or by location.

With Font Box you no longer have to concern yourself with font management. You can put an end to font-related computer crashes, application errors, and unpredictable output while improving your system's performance and minimizing your fonts' memory and disk space requirements. In just a few minutes, Font Box's comprehensive features give you unprecedented control over your fonts.

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How Font Box Works - the short version
	Font Box performs a variety of housecleaning chores and runs a variety of technical checks to ensure your font library is ready when you need it. When you run Font Box, it does all this for you: Probes Disk Drives for Fonts Verifies Font Integrity Eliminates Duplicate Fonts Fixes Unmatched Fonts Removes Bitmapped Sizes Over 12 Point Fixes Font ID Conflicts Creates New Suitcases Creates an Organized Library Cleans Up Old Fonts Reports Font Status Font Box should be part of your system's regular maintenance and preventive care. Font Box saves you time wasted searching for lost fonts, fixing font substitution problems, and chasing down output-related issues. The free Analysis Edition analyzes your fonts and displays all the problems, however, you need to register Font Box to fix all the problems automatically.
	Click to continue->
How Font Box Works - the long version
	1 Probes Disk Drives for Fonts Font Box scours your disk drives and finds all the fonts located anywhere on the drives. This frees you from having to locate or open your fonts manually and eliminates the risk that you'll overlook any font files. Font Box can analyze multiple drives and create a complete, trouble-free set of fonts from all the fonts on all the drives. The Font Box Network Edition can locate, analyze and repair fonts on multiple Macs on your network, create a new library of all your fonts, and synchronize them across all your machines. The Network Edition is particularly handy for designers, service bureaus, and work group managers with large font collections or large numbers of Macintosh workstations. 2 Verifies Font Integrity Corrupt fonts are a major cause of system and application crashes. When your Macintosh crashes, files that are open can become corrupted. Since bitmapped font files in suitcases are opened every time your Macintosh starts up, they are obvious targets for corruption. Unfortunately, a corrupt font leads to more crashes and more corrupt fonts. And without Font Box, corrupt font files are very hard to detect and repair. Font Box performs several consistency checks to ensure the integrity of all your fonts. If it finds a problem, Font Box attempts to repair the font or alerts you to delete the problem font and reinstall it. By repairing corrupt fonts, Font Box improves the stability of your Macintosh and your applications. 3 Eliminates Duplicate Fonts Duplicate fonts waste disk space and cause font ID conflicts that result in annoying error messages and inconsistent output. Fonts may be duplicated as they are added and removed from your hard drive. In fact, reinstalling your Mac OS System 7 software or applications can cause duplicates. Font duplication also occurs when you have both TrueType and Type 1 versions of a font on your hard drive. If an application uses a TrueType font one time and a Type 1 font another, the appearance of fonts on your display and printer output may be inconsistent. 4 Fixes Unmatched Fonts Type 1 fonts require both a bitmapped and PostScript font to display and print correctly. When fonts are moved, bitmapped fonts may become separated from their corresponding PostScript fonts. An unmatched bitmapped font displays correctly only in its installed sizes, but does not print properly. And an unmatched PostScript font can never be referenced and only wastes disk space. Font Box identifies all these unmatched, orphaned fonts and ensures that bitmapped fonts display correctly, ends unexpected font substitution, and saves disk space. 5 Removes Bitmapped Sizes Over 12 Point If you use Adobe Type Manager, it automatically renders all fonts on your screen from only one bitmapped point size. However, ATM does not always accurately display fonts in small point sizes. Font designers may provide small font bitmaps to help in these situations. Therefore, Font Box allows you to remove all bitmapped sizes over 12 point to reduce disk space and memory requirements. 6 Fixes Font ID Conflicts Font ID numbers are used internally by Mac OS to uniquely identify all open fonts. Therefore, each font must have a unique ID number when it loads. Unfortunately, there are more fonts than ID numbers, resulting in unexpected and endless font conflicts. Font Box renumbers conflicting Font IDs to ensure that all your fonts open properly. Because Font IDs are not unique to a particular font, modern applications refer to font names rather than font numbers, so renumbering your fonts has no undesirable effects. 7 Creates New Suitcases After Font Box identifies all your font problems, it creates a clean font library organized the way you want. In your new font library, Font Box creates new suitcase files containing entire font families labeled with the font's name for easy identification. In addition, Font Box optionally puts a suffix on the font file identifying it as either TrueType (.tt) or Type 1 (.t1) and moves loose bitmapped fonts into their proper suitcases. 8 Creates an Organized Library Fonts should be logically organized so you can recognize them at a glance, add new fonts to your library quickly, open existing fonts easily, and locate specific fonts for sending to service bureaus. Font Box gives you a variety of ways to organize your new font library. Specifically, you can: Place all fonts in a new Fonts folder in the System Folder, or in the Font Box library, if you have a small font library. Organize fonts in alphabetical sub-folders if you have a large font library and want to access fonts by their name. Organize fonts by parent folder if you classify fonts by other than font name. Organize fonts by current location if you are confident that all your font files are properly organized and that you want to maintain their current locations. Place each font in its own separate folder. 9 Cleans Up Old Fonts After Font Box creates your new font library, your old fonts may still be strewn across your disk drives. At your choice, Font Box moves all existing fonts into an Old Fonts folder or, optionally, to the Trash. 10 Reports Font Status As a final step, Font Box generates reports that you can view on screen, print or save to disk for importing into a word processor. Font Box produces the following reports: A font inventory before Font Box creates and moves any fonts The font problems Font Box detected A font inventory after Font Box finishes building your new font library The inventory reports can be sorted alphabetically by font or by location. With Font Box you no longer have to concern yourself with font management. You can put an end to font-related computer crashes, application errors, and unpredictable output while improving your system's performance and minimizing your fonts' memory and disk space requirements. In just a few minutes, Font Box's comprehensive features give you unprecedented control over your fonts.
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