EXTENSIS SUITCASE FUSION WEBCAST FAQ

System fonts and system font management
Font corruption and caches
Plug-ins and activation
Fonts and networks
General questions

System fonts and system font management

In Safari (helvetica) italic fonts show up as unreadable gibberish. Emails sometimes come in with garbled text. How can I fix this?
This is usually because the Helvetica that ships as part of Mac OS is not the one that is active and being used. If you quit other programs that might have activated another Helvetica or just make sure you have deactivated it, your views should return to normal.

Under OS 10.5 I can't seem to delete or replace the system's Helvetica and HelveticaNeue files, so how can I use fonts of the same name that aren't really the same?
You can use Suitcase Fusion to activate the Helvetica you want to use instead of the OS version, but there are a lot of reasons it’s not a good idea to delete it (see previous question). Usually you can be careful to deactivate it when it isn’t being used and you should be in good shape.

I have Suitcase Fusion handling all my fonts except the grayed-out system fonts the OS won't allow. Mac OS 10.4.11 A few fonts that are open do not show up in my Quark 7 font list menu. They are not corrupt because they show up perfectly in Photoshop. Font Doctor reports these fonts are okay. One is an uncommon Font House font, so no duplicate name for this one.
This is a tricky question and you might be better served by contacting Extensis Technical Support, they can ask you for more information and give you some good methods for determining precisely what’s happening.

Will Suitcase allow you to shut off core system fonts that are supposed to always stay on?
Yes and no. Not all “core system fonts” are necessary for the system to boot and function normally. Anything required by the OS is grayed out in the “Manage System Fonts” option in Suitcase Fusion so you can’t accidentally turn off a required system font. If you want to know which fonts those are you can find them in the Best Practices Guide.

How do I decide which local System Fonts to "manage" with Suitcase?
You can manage as few or as many System Fonts as you like with Suitcase. I suggest managing as few as you are comfortable with just so there are less to keep track of. As I mentioned above, anything grayed out in the Manage System Fonts preferences is essential for the OS and can’t be managed so you can’t do any harm to your system.

Font corruption and caches

I have some fonts that X1 will load correctly but Fusion won't; they just don't show up, without any error message or warning. Any idea why?
I am not really sure why this would be-it could be something discovered if you run those fonts through Font Doctor and see what it says about them. If they do not register any errors in Font Doctor, you might want to talk to Extensis Technical Support and see what they suggest.

Plug-ins and activation

How can I get my fonts to auto-activate in InDesign?
We offer an auto-activation plug-in for InDesign that runs with Suitcase Fusion which does this for you.

Can I limit Word, for example, to just a few fonts so that it doesn't take so long to load? Right now all my fonts load.
This could be because all of your fonts are in a system font folder. If not, there are a number of fonts that Microsoft Office installs and that may be the list you’re seeing. Check for fonts in your home/Library/Fonts folder and the other locations on your system according to the Best Practices Guide, and see if that helps shorten the list.

Fonts and networks

We have 7 artists working on Macs. Our InDesign crashes a lot, and it seems to be caused by font issues. If we turn Suitcase off, the program will run OK. Have you heard of InDesign having more issues with fonts than other programs?
Application crashes can be caused by a number of things, but I would suggest running your font collection through Font Doctor just to be sure you are using fonts that are not corrupted. If you still have trouble, contact Extensis Technical Support.

Are there any drawbacks to storing fonts on a shared server?
Yes! You can end up with files being written with bad information. If I turn on a font and you try to use it there can be all kinds of problems. If you rename the server or work from a different machine you can end up with corrupt documents since the paths don’t line up anymore. If you are trying to give a number of people access to a standard font collection you should investigate something like Universal Type Server which lets you have one “master” font collection that you push out to all the workstations.

General questions

We have recently upgraded our OS to Leopard, and to Suitcase Fusion (from Suitcase) and have had a lot of font issues since then. One major problem is that we've added a computer and a designer and are having lots of font conflict issues between the two computers. My question is, "Is there an easy way to coordinate the two computers to have the same fonts?" (e.g. one may have one version of Helvetica, which conflicts with a true type version.)
You have to sit down and go through each collection and decide which ones to keep. Your best bet would be to have a Mac volume on the network where you could put both font collections and compare them or just let Font Doctor sort out duplicates. If you are having issues with font conflicts, sometimes that indicates a font cache issue, and tips for resolving that are below.

My fonts show up with each screen and printer font, and I would like them to be viewed by family vs individual. I can't find a preference or setting to change. Is there one?
You can find different views under the ‘View’ menu, one of them (either by family or by suitcase) should give you what you are looking for.

The Best Practices guide shows 3 options for organizing fonts: (1) Using Font Doctor (2) Using Suitcase Fusion (3) Manually. How do I choose which method to use?
This is up to you. Each method is a little different so there is probably one that will be easiest for you. I personally prefer a mix of Font Doctor and manually because when it comes to my computer I want to make sure I know exactly what’s going on.

Is there an easy way to print out a sample sheet with all available fonts - several to a page for quick reference?
Yes! You have the option of printing a specimen page for each font in Suitcase Fusion. Just go to the ‘File’ menu and select ‘Print Sample Pages’.

Where is the vault located?
It is located in your home directory, in Library/Application Support/Extensis.

Regarding the process for removing duplicates: If the font lists two fonts with the same name, and the same style, but one has a later version than the other, such as Helvetica 2.0002 and Helvetica 3.0002, can I assume removing the earlier version is okay as they are the same font but the later version may have newer kerning tables perhaps?
Versioning is something that might have a different answer for everyone. If you remove that old font but have documents that use it, those documents will come up with errors until they get updated with the new font, which sometimes is more work than just making sure to use the newer version from now on.