Font Preview

[jamesmise]

It's nice that when you format text you can see the different fonts, but you have to scroll through the fonts one at a time. It would be nice if the drop down font menu listed the fonts in each one's style. This seems standard in other programs like Microsoft word.

[CipesDesign]

Totally agree! It has been on my personal wish list for a long long time.

[PVA - Admin]

Adding this to the existing request. This one is dependent on some of our text/character handling tech being replaced but it's pretty much considered a "this has to happen" feature.

[sbarnett]

When Selecting the Font from the Text menu it would be nice to have the font name display in the corresponding font that it represents so you could see the style without having to apply the font and repeat when you select the wrong one. something similar to below.

 

[Gerard Jonker]

It would be nice, however, this is not (in the humblest of my opinions) Vectorworks core business.

 

[RGyori]

3 hours ago, Gerard Jonker said:

It would be nice, however, this is not (in the humblest of my opinions) Vectorworks core business.

 

 

Indeed and the drop down menu may take significantly longer to generate the list, as in Word, thus adding to my list of daily frustrations. 😏

[Art V]

19 hours ago, RGyori said:

 

Indeed and the drop down menu may take significantly longer to generate the list, as in Word, thus adding to my list of daily frustrations. 😏

I agree with this as well, with software that does show the font preview it varies greatly how fast it will display the font list. The more fonts are installed the longer it usually takes up to the point of having time for grabbing a cup of your preferred liquid (coffee, tea, water or otherwise). If it is implemented there definitely should be an option to not use font previews to avoid slowdowns.

 

Most of the time people use a limited set of fonts and they know how the font looks like. It is nice to have if you need to switch to a different font that you don't use that often and would be able to see how it looks like, however that is usually only the start as it won't tell how the text will run with regard to spacing, whether it supports certain characters or font features etc..

 

So I would rather have VW focus on adding text handling functionality such as proper custom fractions for fonts that support it (e.g. 11/16 shown as a real fraction and not text with a slash inbetween) and other OpenType feature support first as there is more need for that and font preview last.

[RGyori]

I'm fully on board with Art V on this. VW's text handling needs upgrading. Presenting text based information clearly and neatly is still (or should be!) an important part of what we do each and every day.  

[Grethe Connerth]

, ... this is sooooooo what we need !!!! Fully on board with your suggestions above ...

 

However, I would go maaany steps further on my request list though 😜, this as I work A LOT with VW incorporating graphics and working with fonts and unfortunately have to do a lot of time consuming 'workaround' using Photoshop / 'PS' in order to find the best and most suitable font for my designs.

1. the most time-saving part I find would be: 
   • to be able to activate/highlight text
   • and then at the same time to be able to scroll through the font list, from one font to the next
   • whilst the highlighted text changes to the active font to the next font and so forth

Basically, when I highlight text I can 'scroll through the font list and the highlighted text changes fonts accordingly.

--> this way I can focus on the list of fonts available and comfortably see the highlighted text change 

 

Within VW it's not that intuitive and only one step/one font at a time choice possible, go back to the text choices and do this over and over again.

 

     2. I guess connecting VW to Adobe Font Kits ( when having an Adobe membership ) is rather futuristic / wishful thinking?

 

     3. Favorite Choice Selection of Fonts

 

Within Adobe Photoshop there are also nifty choice addition to narrow down the huge amount of fonts within the list available plus any fonts I added myself such as:

• highlighting a favorite font for future reference - by a 'star'
• choices of listing only 'Serif, sans-serif, handwritten, favorite fonts identified by the star, ... and many other choices

I guess anyone who's using Photoshop understands the notes above.

 

Apologies to VW - I sooo love VW and am totally addicted to it, but the font matter needs an upgrade on so many levels. 😘

 

 

[Jeff Bonny]

On 1/17/2016 at 4:54 AM, PVA - Jim said:

Adding this to the existing request. This one is dependent on some of our text/character handling tech being replaced but it's pretty much considered a "this has to happen" feature.

Seeing that Jim^^^ hasn't logged in for two years I'm kickstarting this thread hoping that someone will charge the batteries in the company give-a-**** meter and finally resolve this problem.

 

It's been seven years less a week since this was posted and there's still no font preview in the dropdown menu. I'm working on a freelance job this morning part of which is building a company logo title block. The client has been vague on the topic of fonts and has asked me create several different samples to show. I was just about to start the utterly craptacular process of using Word to preview fonts and realized I've freakin' had enough of it. The absence of font preview has been a source of frustration for years and I'm completely fed up with the serpentine workflow it imposes. Annotation is a core part of drafting and the attention given to crafting its workflow should reflect that.

 

Please add font preview.

Please also add the ability to edit the fonts list down to a Favorites list as @Grethe Connerth suggested.

Her request to be able to highlight text being edited and have it change while scrolling through available font options would be incredibly useful too.

 

Requesting a fix for a horribly convoluted workflow is not lazy or frivolous. It's essential and long overdue.

The absence of these features is wasting people's time and costing them real money.

Read through other threads with ideas like improvements to font mapping, adding strikethrough, streamlined editing of dimension fonts, the ability to toggle box bordering text from the Object Info palette and it becomes obvious there's some work to be done. Development of efficient annotation in Vectorworks has lagged compared to other aspects of the software. It doesn't need to be perfect but it needs to be a lot better than it is right now.

THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING THIS AND DOING WHAT YOU CAN TO ADDRESS IT.

 

/rant