Viewing fonts prior to choosing???

[Jim]

I am new to the site but is there anyway to view what a font looks like when you click on it in the font menu ?? Thanks

[grnofslt]

Hey… How's it going? Merry Christmas to you. In INDesign CS2 when you open the font menu, you see a WYSIWYG Sample of the font. 6 letters doesn't really give you a good sample of the whole type face. If you use a font manager such as Suitcase gives you a better WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) sample from the suitcase interface. There are other font managers than Suitcase, I just mentioned it because it is one that I have on my computer. There is a free font manager called LinoType Font Explorer X (for the Mac OS X operating system) which also gives you a WYSIWYG view of the fonts on your system. And of course there is Apple's Font Book application which is a font manager which gives one a good WYSIWYG view of the fonts you want to view. Of course everything I'm telling you deals with the Mac operating system. I would venture to guess that the Windows OS has font managers that give you the what you see is what you get view of your fonts. And I would venture to guess that InDesign CS@ also give you the word "Sample" in a WYSIWYG view when you access the fonts menu. I hope that I've helped you

Billy Jay

[G4pj]

A couple of suggestions come to mind. A type manager, will help. OS X comes with one built in if you're using a mac. If you're using Windows, download ATM Light (if still available) from Adobe's site and you'll be able to browse the fonts on your system.

Another option would be to make your own font samples from InDesign, and export samples to pdf for easy screen viewing, or print out samples to keep in a note book.

pj

[The Repro Kid]

If you have lots of Adobe fonts, you can purchase their type samples book for their font folio. At $25, buying this book is infinitely easier than creating and printing your own samples. Anyone who's ever created their own sample book knows that it can be a full time job that can last for several days. The book is now called the "open-type edition" but contains samples of all their fonts.

http://store.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catATLBook