Bottom Line

In the first test, Dave liked FontMonger’s conversion best, I liked Metamorphosis Professional’s best. Dave’s DeskJet tends to have larger dots than my PLP, so the larger dots may partially make up for the thinner strokes. In my case, it’s the exact opposite. In the second test, I’d give FontMonger the edge. In both cases, both programs did a fine job and are equally well suited for converting fonts. There are, of course, a few aspects of each program which I wish would be changed. For Metamorphosis Professional, the major reason why I had held off buying a copy for so long is because it is lacking a feature I very much want: it can’t convert fonts in a Postscript printer without having bitmaps available. This is a hindrance to me since I (infrequently, admittedly) would like to take raw Postscript files from other platforms (notably Sun workstations) containing font descriptions, download them to a Postscript printer, and then convert them with Metamorphosis Professional to Macintosh format. Guess this’ll have to go on the wish-list. For FontMonger, one of its nice features is also a huge inconvenience: its custom file dialogs. All of FontMonger’s dialogs are non-modal. It’s nice that you can shift them around, but now Boomerang-like utilities do not work. Also now that I’ve finally gotten over the habit of hitting tab to switch drives (System 7 uses Command-RightArrow and Command-LeftArrow), FontMonger doesn’t support the new interface since it did things its own way.

OK, so I’m indecisive. I bought both. I’ve long wanted Metamorphosis Professional and finally broke down and bought it. Shortly after, Dave Platt started telling me all sorts of nice things about FontMonger. Ares was getting into areas in which I’m very interested, so the least I could do was support them by buying FontMonger. Which you buy depends on what you need. Both do an excellent job of converting fonts and I have no problems recommending either of them (unless you routinely print out 6 point correspondences). If you want to convert between platforms, go with Metamorphosis Professional. If you want to customize your type library beyond simply converting fonts, go with FontMonger. Of course if you’re a hard-core enthusiast, you’ll end up buying either FontStudio or Fontographer to create your own fonts. (By the way, guys, send me copies of these programs and I’ll be happy to review them….)