In previous versions this was not possible, but there were some other options that worked fairly well - some would say better.
Use the Font palette header
Follow these steps:- Display the Font palette using ⌘-T or the menu Format > Fonts > Show Fonts.
- Click on the wheel in the lower left corner and choose "Show Preview".
To easily scroll between the fonts, first put your cursor in the search field. This will take the focus away from your main document. Then highlight a font and scroll up and down with the arrow keys.
Use the Font palette Favorites
Select the collection "Favorites". It lists the latest font families you used, and it shows them in the last used Typeface and Size.
Use an Apple Script
Follow these steps:- In the Finder, go to Applications and open Font Book.
- In Font Book, highlight all fonts (or the ones you are curious about).
- In the Finder, go to Applications > AppleScript > Example Scripts > Font Book and double click on Create Font Sample.scpt. It will open in Script Editor.
- In Script Editor click on "Run".
- Wait.
Use Font Book
Font Book is an important tool for at least two purposes. One - display what your fonts look like. Two - organise your fonts.The main reason Apple has not included WYSIWYG font displays in Pages or the Font Palette is that it would be next to impossible with all the fonts we have today. You would have to scroll for ever - up and down, looking for a font that fits your needs. You would forget the name of one you saw and you would have to start over again.
WYSIWYG font menus worked on the first Macs, when the average user had no more than six fonts, but today the average user has several hundreds.
If you are serious about finding the most perfect font in this hay stack, use Font Book collections. It does not cost anything, and they are easy to remove, when no longer needed.
Create a collection for for example sans serif fonts, another for good body text fonts, another for Chinese fonts, and so on. It will be much easier to compare Monaco and Andale Mono, if they are in the same small collection, than if you have to scroll 150 fonts to get from one to the other. For more hints how to create collections, check this post.
5 comments:
One can also use a third party tool, like FontSight. The problem with these is that they may cause instabilities in the system. If you have problems after a system upgrade, things like FontSight are the first thing to look out for as possible error sources.
WYSIWYG fonts are a basic feature of a word processing program. I don't accept your statement that
"The main reason Apple has not included WYSIWYG font displays in Pages or the Font Palette is that it would be next to impossible with all the fonts we have".
MS Word does it; AppleWorks provides the option in its Preferences. Those who don't want it don't use it.
PLEASE provide this option for Pages.
I already have paid $80 twice, to get the "Format Bar" which makes Pages a bit like a decent word processor. Will I have to pay $80 a third time to get a WYSIWYG upgrade?
We are of course all allowed to have different opinions on this matter.
I did some tests on my trusty old PowerBook G4. In both MS Word and AppleWorks it takes more than 10 seconds to scroll through the font list from one end to the other.
The FontPanel of Pages and TextEdit allows me to create collections so I quickly can change between Arial and Zapfino.
If I have three words I want in Zapfino in a paragraph with Arial being the default, I have to switch six times, which means I spend more than one minute just waiting for the right font to appear in the list in AppleWorks. Personally, I do not find that acceptable.
However, I am not the one who takes the decisions. Feel free to leave feedback at http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html
According to bbold, Word 2008 takes about one minute to launch with font previews active. If font previews and the Project Gallery are deactivated, the start up time is just four seconds.
Magnus, we are indeed able to differ.
The font scrolling of a long list can be greatly speeded by touching a letter on the keyboard, and the list then goes to fonts starting with that letter. (Of course, this is less useful if you are searching for a style by looking at the WYSIWYG.) But it still can be useful.
Shep222
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