Font Renamer for Mac

2.0 stars

"A time-saving font renaming tool with future potential."

December 3, 2010  |   By The_Publisher_/_Developer_553

Version: Font Renamer 1.0

Pros

Scans and changes font names to a more human readable form quickly and easily through a drag n' drop approach.

Cons

It would be nice to control which fonts get the special font renaming treatment. A preview of how the font names will change would be a great asset. Keep an eye out for updates to this potentially useful tool.

Summary

Font Renamer 1.0
CNET request for a review 4 December 2010

A relatively new entrant to the family of font management software tools is Font Renamer 1.0 for Mac.

As the name suggests, this utility attempts to rename font files. It does this by turning those obscure and shortened font names such as arialbl.ttf into a more human readable Arial bold Italic.ttf. And as an optional extra, you can view Special Characters in selected fonts (it turns out this is identical to the Special Characters option in Apple's Font Book).

On trying out the utility, three minor errors were discovered: the first concerns a rare condition where the utility may refuse to process a folder of fonts. If this happens, you should quit and relaunch the utility. The second is that it is possible for a long font name to create a Kern Protection Failure within OSX's libFontParser.dylib as it tries to get file data from the font file. And the third relates to the loss of one or two fonts during processing (eg. the Amplifier font suite). It is unclear in the last situation why this should occur.

Otherwise the utility does perform as claimed. For example, changing Arial Black.ttf to ArialBl.ttf will return to the original font file name of Arial Black.ttf using this tool. Furthermore, it is relative quick at scanning and renaming font files. A great time saver.

Apart from a slightly more refined processing engine for renaming fonts to address the above errors, a worthy improvement should be:

1. The "Drop Folder Here" window turned into a preview window after dropping a folder of fonts into it. The window should show the fonts' original names in one column, new names for the fonts in a second column as determined by this utility (highlighted in red if there is an expected change from the original), and check boxes in a third column to permit the user to select which fonts to allow Font Renamer to change. Three buttons at the bottom should allow a user to search for all fonts, apply changes, and quit.
2. Help information should be included with the utility. It is also worth mentioning the purpose of the utility and the benefits the utility can bring to users after changing the font names.

A great concept so long as other software manufacturers are doing the same thing. Indeed, once the names are changed, the main hassle will probably come later when software manufacturers install their own applications together with a heap of additional fonts. The result could be a greater number of duplicated fonts filling up the font folder.

So perhaps Font Renamer 1.0 should go further to provide a secondary function: to search for duplicate fonts, highlight the duplicate fonts and their names (once it knows the correct font names), and give the user the option to select the correct or most up-to-date fonts.

And while we are at it, why not perform another useful function? For example, one option not available in Apple's Font Book is the ability to look at a piece of sample text in all the different fonts available. Instead of selecting one font in Apple's Font Book to see the effect on the text, the text should be duplicated and the font changed for each sample text and stored in the same window for quick scrolling. And why not group together the text with similar font type face designs (eg. standard, creative, old style etc)? Such a feature would save the user time in choosing the essential core set of fonts he/she needs. And highlight the standard fonts used by nearly everyone so that users know which fonts should be kept.

As this is version 1.0, the developer will almost certainly provide improvements. In fact, should the developer take onboard some of the above ideas for new features, Font Renamer 1.0 will become a great utility.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (0) (0)