The Finder won't let you move items out of the Fonts folder while an application is running, and newly installed fonts aren't available to running applications until they quit. Utilities like Adobe's ATM Deluxe, Extensis' Suitcase, Diamond Soft's Font Reserve, and Alsoft's Master Juggler help get around this problem. They let you load and unload fonts from anywhere on your hard disk, at any time. You can create sets of fonts for each project and load them as a unit, as needed. This conserves memory and prevents your font menu from becoming overloaded.
Some font activators can even load fonts transparently, as they're needed.
Another class of utilities helps tame your font menu. Type Reunion lets you create custom groups of fonts and display them as submenus to reduce clutter. Menu Fonts lets you navigate long font menus by typing the first letter of a font's name. It also shows you previews of what fonts look like in several sizes and indicates whether each font is PostScript or TrueType. Additional font utilities are discussed in this month's Shareware Roundup, and Font Agent, a utility for organizing fonts in the Finder, is also reviewed in this issue.