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Freeware Friday: FontHit Font Tools
A free Windows font management application FontHit Font Tools is a free application that allows anyone with a Windows platform to view, install, uninstall and print fonts. (…)
A free Windows font management application
FontHit Font Tools is a free application that allows anyone with a Windows platform to view, install, uninstall and print fonts. While it lacks certain functions which I deem essential, such as on-demand activation and deactivation, it lets you view fonts in many and useful ways and it can even view zipped fonts. You just need to drag and drop them into the application.
It also lacks fancy functions, such as repair of corrupted fonts, like in Suitcase, or smart font sets, which are present in Linotype Font Explorer X (Mac OSX only), but it has all the bits that can make this application usable even for commercial work.
FontHit Font Tools’ functionality will be extensible with the use of plugins, many of which are still in the works at the time of this writing. From FontHit Tools:
With the currently available plugins you can view, preview, install, uninstall, print in color, customize size and text of the previews, browse your hard drive and view fonts in convenient categories, use drag-’n-drop to add font files (even folders and zip files with fonts) to the preview list. You can also search the web for fonts and font-related webpages right from within the Font Tools, using the FontHit Search plugin.
As it stands now, the application has one bug which should be noted: I couldn’t switch off any computer running Windows XP Home Edition I installed it on, unless I closed FontHit Font Tools first. If you remember to do that however, there are no problems in switching off or restarting the computer.
Aside from that bug, I find FontHit Font Tools to be a better application than Font Frenzie, and, as I already stated, it can be very well used within professional grounds.
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Actually, you can temporarily install fonts while FontHit is running.
Just create a collection, drag the uninstalled font to the collection, and click the little green flag icon to ‘toggle the item’s state’. This temporarily installs the font while FontHit runs.
I have several Publisher documents that use odd fonts, that I have put into a collection, and if I remember to run FontHit first, the fonts are automatically all loaded.
That still requires your intervention for the activation, or am I misunderstanding you? Aside from MS Publisher, does this work with any other application? It didn’t seem to work for me in QuarkXPress 6.5 and Photoshop CS2, but I am willing to try it again (and will check it also with InDesign and Illustrator.)
I appreciate your input, I strive to give the most detailed information as possible.
Sorry for the delay in replying, I had difficulty finding this page again! (I couldn’t find a link on your main page???)
It works for me in Adobe Photoshop Elements. Just run Font Tools, any font that is in a collection and marked green will be temporarily installed without any further intervention.
Of course if you have previously used a font that is not permanently installed, and you don’t run Font Tools before looking at that text again in Elements or Publisher, it can get messy.
I don’t have the other programs you mentioned.