Aero Taskforce

Full Font Manager - Turn Fonts On and Off, Group Fonts, Preview Fonts, Etc

Submitted by purefusion on June 10, 2008 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Legacy, Usability

Problem: Along with the ability to better-install and preview fonts should be the capability to really manage fonts. Fonts are one of the major factors that slow system performance on startup, and can also slow down the startup of various applications.

Being able to turn off fonts we don't often need is a certain plus. Also, being able to organize and/or group fonts would not only allow for tidy font organization, but also allow us to turn on/off an entire group of fonts.

Solution: A simple font management interface that has supposedly already been implemented. It would allow users to turn fonts and font-groups on or off by clicking a check box next the the font/folder.

It should also allow users to group classes of fonts together, whether in the font-manager-style interface, or by simply creating a new folder within the actual fonts folder, so it can physically hold other fonts rather than using metadata or the dreaded registry to hold such data.

And of course, we all want the ability to preview multiple fonts at once. Am I right?

Think back to the old Adobe Type Manager, which was simple and clean. Of course there are plenty of other (newer, nicer) font managers around, but such functionality should really be standard in the OS by now.

Severity: High

Impact: High

Status: Not fixed