Suitcase Fusion
(v12.1.7)
November 2007

This release includes:
  • Improvements to the Manage System Fonts feature
  • Enhanced system font override and font-activation under Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.5.1
  • Plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign CS3 (separate download)
Additional details about each enhancement can be reviewed below.

A full installer, including professional font auto-activation Plug-ins and XTensions, as well as updates to Font Doctor can be downloaded here: http://www.extensis.com/en/support/updates/SF-12.1.7.jsp
Extensis Suitcase Fusion Release Notes
Installation notes
  • Mac OS X v10.3.9 or higher for PowerPC-based systems
  • Mac OS X v10.4.4 or higher for Intel-based systems
  • 1GHz or faster CPU
  • 256MB of RAM
  • 30MB of free hard disk space + font storage (potentially 1GB)
  • 300MB of free hard disk space + font storage for Font Reserve Upgrade
  • CD-ROM for installation
Installing Suitcase Fusion

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.

Highlights
The following describes some of the significant highlights of Suitcase Fusion.

Universal application

This release of Suitcase Fusion is a universal application able to run on both PowerPC and Intel based systems. It allows fonts and font metadata to be easily moved between these architectures via the Apple Migration Assistant or Suitcase Fusion’s own transportable Font Vault.

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.

Enhanced AppleScript support

With this release, scripts created with AppleScript are able to add fonts directly into the Font Vault.

Automatic updates

Suitcase Fusion will now automatically check for updates and give you the option to download and install the most current version.

Fixed issues
The following reported problems have been fixed in Suitcase Fusion. The list is intended to cite the most serious fixes known. It is not an exhaustive list of all fixed problems.

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.7)


ID Description
A To provide effective font activation, Suitcase Fusion now automatically disables two Font Book 2.1 preferences,  in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). The preferences, "Automatic font activation" and "Alert me when system fonts change"  can conflict with a professional font manager.
B The Manage System Fonts tool was updated to include font changes included with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.6)


ID Description
A The 12.1.5 release introduced a side effect where the Show Missing Fonts dialog was displayed if postscript suitcase fonts that had been added in place were activated before upgrading to 12.1.5, slowing the startup sequence.
In 12.1.6 the show missing font dialog is no longer posed at startup under that condition and the overall startup sequence is faster.

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.5)


ID Description
A Fixed an issue where font names were incorrectly recorded in the Suitcase Fusion 12.1.4 database, causing documents to use the incorrect font.
B Addressed  a line break issue in the Preview window.

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.4)


ID Description
A Fixed an issue where fonts files were incorrectly identified as corrupt if they had a Finder flag indicating they had bundle ('BNDL') resource.
B
 Addressed a problem that improved performance when adding PostScript fonts.

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.3)


ID Description
A A number of stability enhancements were implemented based on direct customer reports from the BugReporter.
B Font activation speed was improved through a number of code optimizations.
C The speed at which Suitcase Fusion finds missing fontswas improved.
27095 Fixed an issue relating to corrupt font repair. When attempting to repair some unrepairable fonts Suitcase Fusion renamed the original file, appending a " 1" to the name. This issue was corrected.
27742 Fixed an issue where paths longer than 1025 characters in startup items would cause Suitcase Fusion to close unexpectedly.
27744 Postscript fonts that have been separated by Font Reserve can now be added to Suitcase Fusion. 
27765 hFont files from DTP Types Limited can now be added to the Font Vault.
27539 Fixed an issue where some fonts when added in place were incorrectly flagged as orphans.
28198 Suitcase Fusion will no longer close unexpectedly if a font is missing foundry metadata.
28228 Fixed an issue where Suitcase Fusion would close unexpectedly if a vault folder containing fonts was moved or deleted. 

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.2)


ID Description
A A number of stability enhancements were implemented based on direct customer reports from the BugReporter.

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1.1)


ID Description
27312 Permanently activate fonts sometimes activated incorrectly, did not preview, and could be marked as corrupt after launching Suitcase Fusion.

Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.1)

ID Description
24435
 Activation of OpenType fonts is significantly faster compared to earlier versions. 
25941
 When overriding system fonts, Suitcase Fusion will no longer show you a warning when the "Show me a warning" option is disabled in the Activation tab of the Preferences dialog box.
26131
 Improved temporary font cleanup.
26228
 Suitcase Fusion now launches PDF help from the help menu.
26360
 Managing system fonts no longer affects activation speed. 
26430
 Fonts in linked EPS files can now be automatically activated in Quark 6.5  when printing.
26760 Suitcase no longer closes unexpectedly  when un-managing System Fonts while a suitcase is twisted open and "deselect all" is used.
26764 Attributes can now be applied to empty sets.


Fixed in Suitcase Fusion (v12.0.1)

ID Description
25911 Face level font activation now works for fonts that are added in-place when you move fonts to a new location on the same volume.
25877 When you import a previous database that contains permanently activated fonts, Suitcase Fusion now continues to operate.
25906 Fonts that are added to Suitcase Fusion in-place can be activated using Face level activation, even when their location path is longer than 255 characters.
25992 You can now open PDF files that contain Font Sense data which were previously saved from either Illustrator or InDesign in the Apple's Preview application.
25830 When you open auto-activated fonts, all duplicate font warnings are now real warnings.
25684 When no longer managing System fonts with Suitcase Fusion, Suitcase Fusion now continues to operate as expected.
26206 Permanently active fonts added in place will now show up in applications when Suitcase Fusion is launched.
26021
26032
26033		 System font conflicts are now resolved properly in QuarkXPress 6.x, Adobe Illustrator CS, CS2, and InDesign CS and CS2.
26062 Auto-activating a base weight of certain fonts no longer causes all fonts with a name matching the base weight to be activated.
26111 Certain permanently active fonts in the font vault will now reactivate properly upon restart even if there is a duplicate of that font in the system folder.
Known issues
The following issues are known, but have not yet been addressed in this version of Suitcase Fusion. The list is intended to cite the most serious problems known. It is not an exhaustive list of all known problems.

ID Description
21217 You cannot add fonts to the vault if the vault is located on a network home folder. When you attempt this operation, the fonts are instead added to your local home folder.
23650 Adding a folder with Kanji characters and then deactivating the corresponding Suitcase Fusion Set will cause the folder name to disappear.
25084 If the InDesign plug-in finds several possible matches for a requested font, but fails to find an exact match, the possible matches do not appear sorted with best match first in the list of Possible Replacements in the "Missing Original" dialog box.
25269 If you quit Suitcase Fusion while you are using the Illustrator plug-in, you will not be issued a warning.  The plug-in will not activate fonts until you restart Suitcase Fusion.
25378 If you quit Suitcase Fusion while you are using the InDesign plug-in, you will not be issued a warning.  The plug-in will not activate fonts until you restart Suitcase Fusion.
25381 If you quit Suitcase Fusion while you are using the QuarkXPress plug-in, you will not be issued a warning.  The plug-in will not activate fonts until you restart Suitcase Fusion.
25436 When fonts are added to Suitcase Fusion,  the words "Extra" and "Ext" in the font family "Reliq" are mistakenly applied the "Extra" to style. If the Suitcase Fusion is unable to recognize any modifiers in this font family, it may assign conflicting styles to the same font face.
25692 The global auto-activation "diamond" indicator may not appear in the Family View when it should.  This indicator will correctly appear when you are viewing either the Suitcase or font View.
25704 If the vault contains a printer file for either a PostScript or Multiple Master font without an associated screen font, that font cannot be added to Suitcase Fusion.  To avoid this situation, you should not manually remove screen fonts from the vault or add printer files to Suitcase Fusion without an accompanying screen font.
25712 If you are in either the Font, Suitcase, or Family View while using the "Selected Set" filter, the Fonts Pane may not automatically update when you add a font to a selected set.
22807 The trademark symbol may not appear as expected within the Global Auto-activation Duplicate Font dialog.
24244 The Illustrator and QuarkXPress plug-in Find Fonts dialog may appear even when you don't have any missing fonts. This situation is likely to occur if the font is already active, a duplicate font exists in the vault, the pick best match option is turned off, and you open a document that doesn't have any Font Sense information.
25643 If you have a corrupted font that fails to be repaired by the Scan & Repair function, it may display the words "File is OK" even though the font is still corrupt and is marked in the Fonts and Sets panes with a damaged font icon.
Contacting Extensis
To reach us for technical support or general questions please use the following method:
Web/email:  http://www.extensis.com/support/

If you have an annual service agreement, you are entitled to priority support. Please use the contact information on your service agreement.

For customer service please use one of the following methods:
Web/email: http://www.extensis.com/customerservice/
Phone:(800)796-9798

 © 2007 Extensis, a division of Celartem, Inc. This document and the software described in it are copyrighted with all rights reserved.

11/14/2007 JK