Review – MarsEdit 2.0

So I’ve been blogging now for six months and until very recently, I did it all in the Wordpress web client. There really is nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly fine. Of course it is also perfectly fine scrub your floors with a toothbrush and self perform your own dental work. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is possible.
I’d heard about applications that allow you to blog without a browser but never got around to trying any of them out until red-sweater released version 2.0 of MarsEdit. I’ve now been using it for about three weeks and I’m very pleased with it. MarsEdit is a blogging tool that, at its most basic level, allows you to write and edit posts, import media, and upload your genius to your blog without having to wrestle your way through the online editors.
It works with most of the big blogging engines. I’ve been using it with Wordpress both on my wordpress.com site and, since moving my blog to its own server, on the macsparky.com server with no troubles whatsoever.
The main window allows you to see your text and html as you type. Fortunately for me, it does most of the html work for you. I can add links, photos, technorati tags, and a variety of other coding that, frankly, I’d have no clue how to pull off without MarsEdit doing the work for me. It also pulls my online tags down from my site so I can mark up and add new tags right from MarsEdit.
In addition to the local media support, version 2.0 also allows for Flickr support which is nice for those of you who blog from your Flickr photos. I wish, however, that it supported the OS X media browser.
When my eyes start getting bleary, I can also print out drafts of my entries and proof-read them on paper before uploading. A practice which I sadly do not do often enough. Since that “post” button seems irresistable to me, I often end up posting entries with grammatical errors. I’m not talking your simple comma splice. I’m talking in your face mis-spellings and conjugation errors that would make Strunk and White turn in their graves. Once again MarsEdit to the rescue. You can edit and repost within MarsEdit.
Version 2.0 also supports html markup macros. While in principle I understand what that is, in practice I’m clueless so you are on your own to figure out that feature. I do know that I was able to copy in an html snippet on National Talk Like a Pirate Day and it was ready to post a very nice code embedded entry at MacSparky. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and I didn’t push the “Post” button that time.
Wordpress does not play nicely with Safari 3 so it was even more onerous for me blogging through the browser because Safari would work to a certain point and then fail. I kept forgetting to open Camino and as a result, many times I’d end up writing an entry twice. Using MarsEdit, I can now easily write and upload without any browser.
You can download a free 30-day trial of MarsEdit at Red-Sweater.com. If it hooks you it will cost $29.95. For MarsEdit veterans, the upgrade will set you back $9.95.

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Review – EagleFiler

Like a lot of people, I’ve been coming to the slow realization that I need a way to organize my digital life. Gone are the days when the sum total of the “data” on our computers was a 5 1/4 floppy of WordPerfect files. We now store documents, pictures, sound files, video. My bills arrive in my email box and I’m constantly bombarded with snippets of digital information I need to record or lose. Quickly it becomes overwhelming.
I tackled this in phases. It started out with a series of nested folders and has graduated to Yojimbo and Yep databases. This week I took a look at a newer entry in the data management game, EagleFiler.
EagleFiler is by the same guy that did Spam Seive and that, in my book, gives the program instant credibility. EagleFiler has several features which distinguish it from other information managers. It loads up with the familiar three pane window. Folders on the left, file lists on the top, and images on the bottom. If you can navigate iTunes, you can navigate EagleFiler. I like the User Interface. It is clean and doesn’t get in my way.
Unlike some of the other data management programs, EagleFiler seeks to organize all of your data. You can drop just about anything into it including mail, Web pages, PDF files, word processing documents, and images. Importing is accomplished by dragging or using the import hot key which defaults at F1. The NetNewsWire support is nice and Safari pages also come in really clean with images, links and the works. When you hit F1, it makes a satisfying “click” and you know the document is captured. It also has Growl support.
Once they are in you can do a variety of things with them. For those of you who like folders you can make a slew of them. Smart folders, nested folders, you name it. For the “searchers” among us it has full support for tagging and you can search the database with a variety of fields or even a wide open “Spotlight” style search that even pulls words out of the source documents. It also does Boolean searches which I find very helpful in my larger work databases. Another thing about EagleFiler is the search is really fast. It is much faster than Spotlight but also churning through a much smaller database.
If you like to use OS X’s comment field you will love the “note” feature in EagleFiler. It allows you to use rich text and several other formatting options not available in the native comments. If your email box is getting out of control, EagleFiler will pull and index your email. I played with this feature but have to admit I like MailSteward better as an archival tool. The ability to include select emails with specific libraries should not, however, be discounted. It is quite useful. It also imports your MailTags metadata. Unfortunately, there is no .Mac sync. I’m not even sure that is practical in light of the multiple libararies.
One thing I like about EagleFiler is the data is kept in its native format. It is not sucked into some proprietary database but instead dumped in an EagleFiler created set of nested folders. This means that if you stopped using EagleFiler, you would still have your data. This is important. I have a feeeling our information managers in five years will be very different from what we are using now and I want to make sure I can carry my data forward.
Another nice feature is the ability to use multiple libraries. This feature distinguishes EagleFiler from some of the other information managers and can be both a blessing and a curse. If you don’t give it some thought when setting up multiple libraries you can find yourself searching for data in the wrong database. That being said, I think multiple libraries are great. It allows me to set up separate databases for separate projects.
I’ve been using Yojimbo now for some time and while these programs are similar, they have several differences. Yojimbo only supports one database and puts its data into a single database. This is not really so much of a problem since it is so easy to export from Yojimbo. Yojimbo also has some data specific fields, such as serial numbers and the like while EagleFiler seems more flexible in organization with nested folders. Which of these two programs work for you really depends on your needs and how you work. Frankly, I’m using them both quite effectively. Using EagleFiler’s custom libraries, I have created several databases for some of my more complex work projects. These databases have hundreds of pdfs, emails, notes, and documents all easily searchable with EagleFiler’s powerful tools. I have a program on my PC box at the office that is supposed to do the same thing. The only difference is it cost a lot more money and crashes both randomly and often.
You can download a trial copy or buy EagleFiler for $40 at c-command.com.

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Review – iPod touch

I’ve already explained how my daughter put the squeeze on me for a new iPod touch. Yesterday I took her down to the local Apple Store and we were fortunate to get one. She was so happy. I can’t really mock this excitement. I did buy an iPhone on June 29 and I do happen to run a Mac blog. Anyway, after playing with it for a day (when my daughter allows me), I thought I’d post a few impressions.
The form factor really is close to the iPhone except it is much thinner. About by half. The case makers are going to have to get to work. The headphone jack is NOT recessed (yay) and the top power button is moved from the right to the left, which does not seem as convenient to me.
Set up was as easy as plugging it in and choosing which data to move over to the iPod. It is so painless that I should say more but us Apple owners are spoiled that way so we just expect it.
A lot of the iPhone applications are identical. Safari, Contacts, Photos, YouTube, and the Calculator among others. The iPod functions are also identical. I’m sorry they didn’t make some of the virtual buttons (FF, RW and pause) bigger. They are hard to hit on the iPhone and also hard to hit on the iPod touch. Other than that gripe, it is the best iPod ever. The video looks gorgeous on it and the menu system is really easy to navigate.
A few things are just silly. You can read your downloaded calendar but you can’t add events on it. Huh? Also, there is no email application. We were able to access her webmail with it but an email application would have been nice.
I guess my biggest gripe with it is not the features that are in it but the features that are left out. If you are looking for an excellent iPod, look no further. If you are looking for something more akin to keeping your Mac in your pocket. Take a look at the iPhone.

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Schoolhouse for Students

My sixth grader has, for the first time, multiple teachers. I was a mess in school as a kid and it took me years to reverse engineer myself into any sort of organization. I’m hoping to help out my daughter and went sniffing for something that would make it fun. I found this great application, Schoolhouse, that really does the trick. It has everything she needs and is fun to use.
The developer explains the application at his website:
“With the ability to sort and organize your assignments, exams, and projects quickly and easily Schoolhouse is a must have for any student on-the-go. The power of smart notebooks allow you to interact with your work as simply as your iTunes library.
Classcasts give the ability to publish your assignments to the web automatically for anyone to subscribe to. A newly redesigned grading system allows you to chart your scores over the course of the term to keep an outlook as you go. All of this works to ensure you will never be in the dark at the end of the semester.”
This was put together by a single developer and looks great. As useful as it will be to my sixth grader, it would be even better for those in high school and college.

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iMovie 08, I Like It

The new iMovie really has some people up in arms. I’m not sure if it is just a vocal minority or Apple’s got everyone mad. What happened is Apple dumbed it down. Gone is the timeline as well as several other tools. In is a really cool skimming feature and much simpler formatting and transitions.
So, I’ve been reading about all these rants and decided to give it a try. I had about 20 minutes of miscelaneous footage on my hard drive taken with the video function of my point-and-shoot Kodak that I haven’t gotten around to processing in Final Cut because I just haven’t had time. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to try this new “controversial” software.
I didn’t crack the manual and just went for it. Importing the video was easy but time consuming. The program builds that skim library for you so it spends a little while chuging through. Rather than watch it go through that process, I had every intention of catching up on email but instead ended up playing frisbee with the neighbor’s dog.
I came back about 15 minutes later and it was done. I don’t know how long it took, but it was done. Then it was really easy. You scan the clips and drag the mouse to select the portion you want to use. You then drag the selected clip into your project. You can drop in transitions, titles, and music very easily. Frankly, I can’t get over how quick and easy it was.
With about 10 minutes work, I had all the video cut down to a 7 minute funny clip with titles, transitions, and music. I then uploaded it to my .Mac account and had an email out to relatives across the US, London, and the Philippines. Apple, I get it.
For John Q Public, this program is excellent for getting video cut and completed with very little trouble. I also use Final Cut and I’m not willing to give up those extra tools but I also really like iMovie 08. If you want those extra tools you can still use iMovie 06, which remains availbable, but I recommend buying Final Cut Express. You get LiveType, Soundtrack, and all sorts of tools to unleash your inner Spielberg. The other nice thing about the new iMovie is you can export directly to Final Cut, which helps streamline my workflow for the serious stuff as well.
So at the end of the day, the new iMovie is a definite improvement in my video production. I appreciate the complainers, sort of. But with iMovie 06 still available, and the very powerful tools you can get with the $300 Final Cut Express, I also think they need to get over it.

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Review – iWork 08 Numbers

There is a reason why I waited until last to do the review of Apple’s new spreadsheet program. I’ve never been very good at them. Frequently I find it useful to create little spreadsheets and graphs. My Excel sheets are generally pretty small. I’ve made more complex spreadsheets, but it usually seems more trouble than it is worth and, frankly, Excel is not always friendly to casual users.
So Apple now has a spreadsheet, Numbers, that is supposed to be “for the rest of us.” I decided to give it a try to see if it lives up to hype.
The first thing that strikes you with Numbers is the layout. All the spreadsheets I’ve used (even back to the DOS days) always had one sheet per page. That is the rule. Isn’t it? Who would think to put more than one sheet on a page and move them around willy-nilly? Well, apparently someone at Apple did. If you haven’t seen any of the screenshots on the web, Numbers allows you to make multiple sheets of various sizes and formatting and even graphic objects, text, and graphs on the same page. No longer does changing the column width for one data group muck it up for the other groups below. It is really convenient.
Not only does this make it easier to build a spreadsheet. It also makes it easier to print. You can move your elements around the page so you have them just the way you want. So many times I’ve had to fiddle with the column widths just for the sake of printing. With Numbers it is easy. Click and drag. It also previews your print so you can see exactly what you are printing.
The support for graphical objects, titles, and graphs is also very smooth. These features tie into the powerful OS X graphics features making drop shadows and other effects both familiar and good looking. Moreover, they move, resize and manipulate very easily.
The templates in Numbers are typical of Apple, clean and useful. For the lazy among us, the templates satisfy a lot of the typical uses for a spreadsheet: budgets, loans, investments and several other common uses. I can hardly wait to see what interesting templates the user community comes up with. The Numbers templates were so useful that it made me go back and look at the Excel templates to see if I was missing something. I wasn’t.
In terms of data input, I found it more intuitive than Excel. It self populates and generally could figure out what I was up to. The available formulas were not as extensive as those in Excel.
I liked the drag and drop calculations that allow you to quickly put together similar calculations of different data. I also really liked the custom cell formatting that lets you work with sliders and fixed intervals. The checkbox feature was also nice for my family budget. I can include and exclude certain lines with a simple check. I tried to find similar features in Excel, but couldn’t. It may be there, but simply beyond my paygrade. But that is the problem with Excel.
The only word I can use to describe the charts is “pretty”. Quite often my spreadsheet charts end up in a Keynote presentation or attached to a document. A lot of time my Excel charts end up looking like a train wreck. This isn’t really Microsoft’s fault but my own lack of subtlety. Thankfully Numbers’ default charts and colors look nice so long as I restrain myself from altering it too much. Like the formulas however, Excel has more variety in the types and formats of charts.
The Excel compatibility worked fine for me. I looked through my Excel files. Over the years I’ve prepared about seventy-five sheets for various work and personal projects. I loaded about twenty-five of them and they all seemed to work fine. A few times I got Apple’s little on-screen warning telling me where it had some heartburn over the conversion but it never seemed to make any difference. I also exported a few Numbers sheets to Excel. They didn’t look as nice, but also worked.
From reading the web I understand that the Excel compatibility isn’t perfect. There are quite a few formulas in Excel that Numbers doesn’t support. Also, thankfully in my opinion, Apple didn’t put macro support in. I think Apple probably put a lot of thought into Steve Jobs’ comment that Numbers is a spreadsheet “for the rest of us” because that is exactly what it is. I think the real high end macro jockeys should stick with Excel. If you need macros and some of those high end formulas, Excel is the only game in town. I doubt many Excel power users will be switching to Numbers. But then again, I also doubt Apple cares.
Regardless, I’ve found myself doing more complex spreadsheets with numbers than I ever did with Excel. Part of this may be my infatuation with this new spin on spreadsheets but part of this is also that it is just easier. It is for this reason that I can recommend iWork for the third straight week. If you have need of any of the iWork applications, the $79 is a no-brainer.

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iPhone Web Apps I Actually Use

Having just taken a small vacation and coming up two months of iPhone ownership, I thought I’d take a look at the web apps I routinely use on my iPhone. There are a lot of very nice iPhone web apps out there programmed by very bright and imaginative people. I’ve probably got about 50 of them linked on my “iPhone Applications” favorites bar but I’ve been making a conscious effort to track those applications that I actually use and thought I’d report on them here.

NewsGator Mobile

Not long after I switched, I went ahead and purchased a license for NetNewsWire which is an excellent news reading program loaded with features and constantly being refined by an active, committed Mac developer. It came with a free subscription to the NewsGator service which is an online reader component. It syncs with NetNewsWire and their iPhone app is really clean and easy to use. I toyed a bit with Google Reader which is free (that is always a good thing) but found the NewsGator/NetNewsWire combo easier for me to use.
Anyway I can check my subscriptions anytime on the iPhone and read through, trash, or clip for later viewing on my Mac very easily from anywhere (including the Edge network). This is my most frequently clicked iPhone web application.

Tadalist.com

I’ve previously blogged about how I use this simple online to-do application from 37Signals with its accompanying browser application for grown up computers to drive shopping lists and other to-do items between my iPhone and OmniFocus. It is free and Edge friendly. My good friend, Darren over at MacWingnut.com prefers todoist.com which is, frankly, much sexier in a geeky sort of way with gmail integration, quicksilver support and other things that sound fun but I like the simplicity of Tada. This is partly because I view it only as a stepping stone to getting tasks in my actual task vault, OmniFocus, wherein Darren (I believe) uses Todoist for the whole nine yards.
I am also trying 37Signals’ accompanying product BackPackit for a month to see if it is worth the trouble. This is sort a Kluge to get around the fact that Apple does not sync the Notes on my iPhone or give me a way to secure them. Ugh. I’ll report more on BackPackit at later date when I’ve had more time to work with it.

Traffic

A necessity for living in Southern California. This is a great supplement to the little red lines I keep seeing in Google Maps.

Applists.com

This is a collection of all the various iPhone web applications that appears to be updated more than most and gives you a simple place to look for what is new.
There are others. Many, many others. But as pretty and neat as they look, I really don’t load them very often.
I am hoping Apple opens the iPhone up. If I could get an iPhone version of OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, and Yojimbo, I would be one very happy camper.

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Review – Pages 08

I was not a fan of Pages 06. I’m sure it was perfectly fine for making brochures and flyers, but unfortunately I never had much need for brochures and pamphlets so there it sat on my hard drive, unused and neglected. That being said, I wasn’t particularly happy with any other of the word processors on my Mac either. I played a bit with Bean and NeoOffice but when it came down to it, I usually ended up in Microsoft Word. Word reminds me of one of those RV’s you see driving down the road. The kind with bicycles tied on the back, a boat bolted to the roof, and spare luggage falling out the window. Like the old RV, Word has every possible feature bolted on and wedged into the various menus. While it has everything you could possibly need (and quite a few you will never need) it drinks system resources and is a real chore to use. Nevertheless, I, like many others, have been using Microsoft Word for more than 15 years and anything else I try will be compared to it.
So Steve Jobs announced the new Pages 08 and explained that now it is a word processor in addition to being a page layout tool. It is in this new word processing mode that I spent most of my time kicking the tires on Pages 08.
All word processors are fundamentally the same. From the days of my 8-bit Atari computer to sitting here with my fancy MacBook Pro, I still am forced to put the words together and get them onto the screen. When it comes to word processing, the devil is in details.
The details in Pages 08 are very nice indeed. There is a contextual format bar that monitors your activity and puts the applicable tools in easy reach. Whether you are typing text, working in a table, or inserting shapes and diagrams, Pages puts the related tools in the top bar.
Pages also incorporates several of the graphical tools added with iWork 08 to this Pages program. This allows for Instant alpha, customizable frames and other graphic tools. They work just as slick as in Keynote. I don’t think I’ll have a lot of need for these tools in a word processor but it is nice to know they are there.
Change tracking has also been added. This is a very important feature for my work. I often exchange documents with others where change tracking is critical. The implementation of change tracking in Pages is both easy and slick. Even more important, it has worked flawlessly with Microsoft Word. Since most of the people I am working with are using Word, this is critical.
Another new feature is automatic lists. This, of course, has been the bane of existence to all Microsoft Word users for years. Apple’s implementation of this feature is a bit more forgiving. It actually adopts your formatting instead of imposing its own. For instance if you type a number 1 and then period and two spaces, it will apply the same with the autoformatting.
The compatibility with Microsoft Word is generally good but not perfect. I put some format heavy contracts into it and made several adjustments while tracking changes. I then exported them to Word format and viewed them in Mac Word 04 and and Windows Office 2003. They looked fine and my windows colleagues were none the wiser. I also tried this with a legal pleading document and the conversion was a mess. Legal pleadings have a very specific format with lines down the left side, line numbering and a variety of other formatting requirements that don’t make a lot of sense but hey .. its the world I live in. Anyway, while the Word pleadings imported just fine into Pages, they did not export to Word properly after changes in Pages. The page formatting, font sizes, line numbering, and just about everything else were screwy and unusable without plenty of work. So for me that means I need to do pleading work in Word or just do it as a text file and send it to others for formatting.
Another issue I never quite sorted out was exporting to different versions of Word. Apple beat Microsoft to the punch with compatibility with Office 2007 but I don’t run Office 2007 so I can’t report on that issue. I tried to figure out if there is a setting to export to Office 2007 or Office 2003. Perhaps if I could sort that out it would solve the problem of exporting pleadings properly but after spending an hour trying to figure it out on the internet, I’m officially kerfluffled on that issue. In short, if you need to work with Word files and use complicated formatting make sure to give it a test run before you commit.
Pages 08 runs much cleaner than Microsoft Word in OS X. It loads quickly and happily exists far down in my activity monitor. As I typed this review in Pages, it ranged between one and ten percent of the total system resources. When I clicked out of Pages it pleasingly dropped to zero percent.
The included templates are very well designed and cover just about any need. It is telling of just how much of a stranglehold Microsoft has on the word processor market that my biggest problems with Pages are not its own feature set but its ability to play nicely with Word. Separating that issue, running Pages is easier and less intrusive than Word. It allows me to think less about the program and more about the words on the screen. While the feature set is more limited, it has everything I need. While Word still remains on my hard drive, I’m quite pleased to leave the Winnebago in the garage.
You can listen to this review on Surfbits MacReviewCast Episode #122.

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Review – Keynote ‘08

Presentations and word processing are my bread and butter. That is, I earn my living writing and presenting. I have been writing Power Point presentations for years. I’m actually very good at them and occasionally freelance for my geek challenged colleagues. It is with those years of experience in mind that I was initially skeptical about using Apple’s presentation software, Keynote. That was, at least, until the first time I saw a Keynote presentation.
I think Keynote (even before this recent update) is superior to PowerPoint in both ease of use and final product. With the release of Keynote ’08, the gap has just grown larger. For the purpose of this review, I’m going to skip over a lot of the features that already existed in Keynote and focus on the new additions. If you are not familiar with Keynote, even before the upgrade it was full of stellar templates, transitions, and text effects that made producing convincing presentations a breeze. Indeed there are even more new transitions and effects but that is just the start of some fantastic changes and additional features.
With the new point to point animation you can tell an object where to go on the screen and how to get there. For example, if you have a map of the forest and want to show exactly how the wolf went to the three little pigs homes, you can plot the motion paths with a one click procedure for each stop and Keynote does the rest. With each click during your presentation the wolf will move across the screen at the speed, acceleration, and motion path that you set. The way I used to accomplish this was a very convoluted procedure involving Final Cut’s Motion program and a lot of praying. Now its a breeze.
Another new feature is one I didn’t even realize I needed but now I couldn’t live without. Its called “Instant Alpha”. It allows me to incorporate picture, pdfs, and other objects and remove the background. I’ve talked about how much I like using OmniGraffle but what I’ve never posted on is the frustration of making a beautiful diagram in OmniGraffle and then having to look at that ugly white background when I import it into Keynote. I guess I could have removed the background all along in Photoshop Elements, but to be honest I never really thought of it. Regardless, with the new Keynote, you just tap the “Instant Alpha” button and then put the mouse inside the color you want to remove. You click and drag and it removes the background on screen for you. When you get it just right, you hit the enter key and its done. It is really easy and extremely useful.
Inevitably, every slideshow I prepare has a run of pictures. A lot of my work involves construction projects and buildings and pictures are essential for demonstrating particular issues. The new keynote has an excellent feature called “Smart Build” that lets you put an entire series of pictures into one slide and easily pick a transition that is flashy or subtle.
Keynote will also now insert a frame around a picture or text box. This is really nice for setting a picture or highlighting text I pull out of a document image. In powerpoint this took two separate images and it was an absolute pain. No more “send to back”. No more resizing and moving multiple objects. Just one clicky. Thanks Apple.
Navigating and sorting also got easier with adjustable sizes and new views. Formatting and auto-correcting also got a lot easier with new tools to make production of your keynote faster and more efficient.
Apple also improved the movie import and export function. You can now key a quicktime movie on a mouse click instead of it starting automatically on the slide transition. It also allows you to export your presentation to Quicktime. This export is not, however, just a static movie but you can actually set it to advance on clicks just as if you are viewing it in Keynote. Are you getting this? That means you can take your Keynote and play it on any machine that has Quicktime. Even a beige box that has requires Norton and is covered with stickers that say “Intel inside”. This feature will be extremely useful to me when I have to give a presentation using somebody else’s windows rig. It will also leave them all wondering, “How did he do that?” And that is a wonderful thing.
So in case you haven’t figured it out I’m giving the new Keynote two big thumbs up. You can purchase it as part of the iWork suite for just $79 or $99 for the family pack. Next week I’ll be following up this review with my look at Pages ’08.
You can listen to this review on the Surfbits MacReview Cast Episode 121.

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Review – MacWare’s FontLibrary

You can hear this review on Surfbit’s Macreviewcast #120.
I have a particular affection for fonts. Back in 1987 I first learned the word “Fonts” when I leaned over a funny looking little beige computer in my college computer lab that said “Hello” when you turned it on. Granted that was a long time ago but the truth is the first thing that really impressed me on the Mac was the way that I could change the screen type. I’m sure I abused this newfound freedom turning in several papers with what could have only been called a font explosion. Does anyone else remember the original “San Francisco” font that bordered on anarchy?

So it was with this nostalgia that I installed the FontLibrary Library from MacWare. This package includes some 600 fonts in several categories including refined, classic, designer and creative. In addition to truetype, it also comes with the fonts in OpenType format. The FontLibrary fonts are licensed for commercial use in printed materials and electronic mediums.

You can manage them in Font Book but I liked the included Mac FontManager better which allows you to see all available and installed fonts and move them as you please. Not only does this let you put some of the new fonts on, it also lets you take the existing ones you don’t use off.

This package really gives you just about anything you could ever need in terms of fonts. I’ve become a bit more subtle since those early days but occasionally have a need for something unique and this package has it for everyone but the most demanding. It retails for about $50 online.

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