Suitcase Fusion Release Notes

To install Suitcase Fusion, double click the installer on the Suitcase Fusion CD, or if you downloaded Suitcase Fusion from the Extensis web site, double-click the downloaded installer. For information about upgrading from previous versions of Suitcase and Font Reserve, see the included PDF upgrade documentation.

Font Sense professional font identification
Intelligent alternates
Font conflict resolution
System wide auto-activation
Font Vault
Duplicate management
Suitcase separation
Multifont format support
Face level activation
Customization
Intuitive user interface
Live font previews
System font management
Group fonts by family
Font classes and foundries
Menu names and PostScript names
Sets and nested sets
Drag and drop add and export
Organized export
Collect fonts for output command

Font Sense professional font identification

The exclusive Font Sense technology provides absolute font fidelity when automatically activating fonts by delving deeper into the font. Using information from the database about each font’s type, version, foundry, kerning information, and more, Font Sense records this information with documents and uses it for precision automatic activation. As documents are opened, fonts are activated for the document and graphics in supported file formats (Font Sense information can be stored with Illustrator EPS files and PDF files generated from Illustrator and InDesign). True font fidelity prevents text reflow that can result in costly printing mistakes, not to mention cause hours of confusion and frustration. Suitcase Fusion provides this professional font identification through Font Sense plug-ins for high-end publishing applications (InDesign CS/CS2, Illustrator CS/CS2, and QuarkXPress 6.x).

Intelligent alternates

If the exact font is not available, Suitcase Fusion offers a list of the best choices so users can accurately select the best font.

Font conflict resolution

While having “duplicate fonts” may seem like a bad thing, almost all creative professionals have them out of necessity. Different clients and projects are likely to use different versions or formats of fonts ranging from Aachen to Zapfino. The important thing is that you can get precisely the right font active when you need it. To help with this, Suitcase Fusion can provide feedback about possible name conflicts and let you resolve the situation.

System-wide auto-activation

In addition to using plug-ins for publishing applications, Suitcase Fusion automatically activates fonts as you open documents in other Mac OS X applications such as Microsoft Office.

Font Vault

Suitcase Fusion lets users decide how to manage their fonts. If users want to keep them in place, we continue to support this option. For those looking for the most powerful font management available, the Font Vault is a managed repository that integrates with the Suitcase Fusion database and makes font management predictable and reliable—especially when users have multiple versions of fonts with the same PostScript name. The Font Vault utilizes the Font Sense technology to allow true font identification and professional duplicate font management.

Duplicate management

The Vault does not allow redundant fonts, so conflicts caused by multiple copies of the same font attempting to activate from different locations do not occur. Font Sense also allows for easy management of different fonts with the same name, and makes it easy to quickly find and compare these fonts

Suitcase separation

In the Vault, font suitcases are broken down into individual font faces that can be activated with lightning-quick precision. This means, for example, you’re no longer forced to activate six faces of Univers when you only want Univers-Black Extended. In addition, this eradicates suitcase-based font conflicts.

Multi font format support

For full font management, the database supports all popular Mac OS font formats, including OpenType, PostScript, TrueType, Apple’s dfont, and double-byte fonts.

Face-level activation

Most font managers took an all-or-nothing approach to activating the fonts in a suitcase. Suitcase Fusion, draws on Font Reserve technology to activate one font face within a suitcase at a time: Bookman-Medium only instead of both Bookman-Medium and Bookman-Bold, for example. When users do need to activate an entire typeface family, Suitcase Fusion provides the more accurate and helpful View by Family mode for one-click activation. In addition, when the original suitcase information is useful, there’s View by Suitcase mode.

Customization

Users can customize database information, including adding Keywords to fonts and changing a font’s Class or Foundry information.

Intuitive user interface

One of the original font managers, over the last 20 years Suitcase has garnered a remarkably loyal following. The reason for this is that creative professionals just get it—the user interface provides a logical organization of fonts and font information. Suitcase Fusion leverages the power of this intuitive user interface, dividing the window into three streamlined areas—sets, fonts, and previews—and providing icons that indicate what you’re looking at, which fonts are active, and more.

Live font previews

When you’re paging through typeface books or scrolling through font previews, looking for just the right font for that new logo or tag line, it’s invaluable to see the actual text. After all, who cares what ABC looks like in a font when you’re concerned with IBM? Drawing from Suitcase X1’s creative power, designers can quickly preview one font or a group of fonts side-by-side. Preview both active and inactive fonts in a variety of customizable formats, including paragraph, alphabet, waterfall, or QuickType™.

System font management

Suitcase Fusion provides the option to move unnecessary system fonts out of all the System Font folders and into your font database for centralized font management. In addition, you can set a preference to override system fonts, to ensure that you’re always using the fonts you intend. Only Suitcase Fusion can override system fonts, which can be very useful when a necessary font needs to be PostScript or OpenType instead of dfont.

Group fonts by family

Suitcase Fusion introduces the ability to group fonts according to typeface family. For example, you can group the faces AGaramond Italic, Regular, Semibold, and Semibold Italic together as Adobe Garamond. In the past, font suitcases often contained the entire contents of a typeface family, so viewing by suitcase was useful. Fewer and fewer fonts are packaged by suitcase, however—for example, in the OpenType version of ITC Stone Serif Std, the six faces are not combined into a suitcase. When grouped by family, it’s easy to manage all the components of a typeface together, whether activating the family, adding it to a set, or collecting it for output. Fonts can still be viewed in their original suitcase groupings as well.

Font classes and foundries

When fonts are added to Suitcase Fusion, they are automatically assigned to a class—a design category such as serif, sans serif, script, symbol/pi, blackletter uncial, and more. The class information is helpful for finding and sorting fonts; for example, you might preview a phrase in all your script fonts. A custom database of classifications is included for this purpose, but these subjective classifications can be customized by users. In addition to font classification, Suitcase Fusion provides improved support for font foundries, making the foundry information useful for searching and sorting criteria as well.

Menu names and PostScript names

While menu names for fonts—such as Fang Song Regular—are helpful for selecting fonts, they’re not necessarily helpful for troubleshooting. Preflighting software and other error checks often report PostScript names such as SIL-FangSong-Reg-Jian. The ability to reconcile a menu name and a PostScript name, at a glance in the Suitcase Fusion window, is invaluable in solving any font issues that arise.

Sets and nested sets

Suitcase Fusion offers the ability to create aliases of nested sets. Font sets can, of course, contain other sets of fonts—for example, a magazine’s set might contain subsets for features, departments, and columns. Suitcase Fusion takes the concept of nested sets one step further, allowing you to place aliases of sets within other sets. When you make changes to the original set, they are automatically reflected in all aliases of that set. So if you have two different magazines using a set for columns, and you change the fonts in the original column set, they’re changed in the other magazine’s set as well. Since sets are always handy for working with different projects and clients, Suitcase Fusion puts them at your fingertips. Using the OS X Dock, you can quickly activate and deactivate font sets without having to open Suitcase Fusion.

Drag and drop add and export

With Suitcase Fusion’s drag-and-drop environment, you never have to locate a font file on any media. Whether you’re adding fonts from a CD, exporting a set to a ZIP, or copying one font out to your desktop, you’re one click away from completion. Drag any media, folder, or files into Suitcase Fusion and it will find and add the fonts.

Organized export

Drag any selected sets, typeface families, suitcases, or fonts out to the desktop and they’re organized into a Collected Fonts folder that reflects the original structure. For example, if you drag out two typeface families, the Collected Fonts folder contains a folder for each family.

Collect fonts for output command

Quickly send a job to print by selecting the fonts you need; Suitcase Fusion copies them to any location for collection.