*** From the Archives ***

This article is from July 31, 2001, and is no longer current.

Extensis Suitcase 10: Heir to the Font-Management Throne?

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To be honest, until this review came along I hadn’t used Extensis Suitcase since version 1.0, some time in the late ’80s. I’ve never had anything against the program, but I always install Adobe Type Manager on my machines to provide font rasterization, and the deluxe version of ATM has always provided all the font management that I need.

All that’s about to change, though, with Adobe’s announcement that it will not be updating ATM Deluxe for either OS X native or Classic environment compatibility. For those of us who tend to install a lot of different fonts for a variety of projects, font management seems pretty important. As such, I was pleased to find that the $99.95 Suitcase 10 actually offers better font management than what I was used to with ATM Deluxe.

Though available in both Mac OS and Windows versions, this latest version of Suitcase is thus far available only for the Mac. One of the most-compelling new features is auto-activation: Suitcase 10 automatically opens fonts as needed. Users are also sure to appreciate Suitcase Strip, a new Apple Control Strip module that puts font management on your desktop, and a handy Collect for Output function that bundles all the fonts used in your document for sending to your service bureau.

Check Your Baggage
In Mac OS 7 and later, you install a font simply by copying it into the Fonts folder inside your computer’s System Folder. Unfortunately, fonts cannot be installed or removed while any applications are running, making it difficult to change installed fonts on the fly. You can get around this trouble by installing all the fonts that you might be using, but more fonts means a more-cumbersome font menu — and a less-stable system. If you’re working on multiple projects, each with a large selection of fonts, your font menu can quickly balloon out of control.

Suitcase takes care of all these problems. Instead of residing in the Fonts folder, fonts can be anywhere on any drive or server. In fact, fonts should be stored anywhere but your Fonts folder. When you want to use a font, you simply activate it with Suitcase. In most cases, the font will immediately become available to all open applications.

Suitcase requires a PowerPC processor, OS 8.6 or newer, and 32MB of RAM. In addition to the main Suitcase application, the installer adds a Suitcase Control Strip module and three System Extensions.

Suitcase 10 gets along just fine with ATM Light, and you’ll want to keep ATM Light installed for its font-rastering capability, which Suitcase lacks. If you’re already running ATM Deluxe, though, make sure to uninstall it before you install Suitcase 10: Because they both try to access your font files, ATM Deluxe and Suitcase 10 have been known to yield unpredictable results when installed at the same time. Click here for detailed instructions on how to uninstall ATM Deluxe successfully.

First Things First
Fonts must be added to Suitcase before the program can manage them, but this is an easy and straightforward process. From the main Suitcase application, you can use the Add font dialog box to open a font stored on your hard drive. Shift-clicking will allow you to select multiple fonts from the same folder. We’d like to see a mechanism for selecting multiple font folders rather than having to take several trips to the Add dialog. The Add command can, however, search a selected folder for all the fonts contained inside.

You can also add fonts simply by dragging them from the Finder into the Suitcase window. This is usually the easiest way of quickly adding a bunch of fonts. The main Suitcase window lets you easily customize its display to show combinations of currently available fonts, sets of fonts, and font samples. The program also includes LemkeSoft’s FontBook — an excellent font-preview utility — and lets you print detailed font samples using a variety of formats.


The main Suitcase window

Once you’ve added a font to Suitcase, you need to turn it on to make it available to other applications, and this “activation” is really what Suitcase — and most of its notable new features — is all about. Fonts can be activated permanently, which means they’ll stay activated through a re-boot, or temporarily, which means they’ll only be active until you shut your machine down.

As with past versions, Suitcase 10 lets you activate fonts by clicking in the margin to the left of a font, or by selecting one or more fonts and clicking on the activate button at the top of the window. You can also create sets of fonts that can be activated with a single click, and even Application Sets, which are font sets that automatically activate when you launch a specific application. For example, if you create a Photoshop set, that set will activate automatically every time you launch Photoshop. Unfortunately, the set won’t deactivate when you quit Photoshop, so if you have a bunch of application sets, you can inadvertently fill your font menu pretty quickly throughout the course of a day’s work.

Activating fonts gets easier still with version 10 thanks partly to the new Control Strip module, which installs automatically along with the rest of the program. Now you can activate and deactivate a set of fonts by simply selecting its name from a Control Strip pop-up menu. In other words, once you’ve built your sets, you don’t even have to go to the Suitcase app. This is definitely the fastest, most convenient font-management tool I’ve seen.


Suitcase 10’s new Control Stip module lets you activate and deactivate fonts without even loading the full Suitcase application.

Automatic Fonts
Suitcase 10 adds even more power with its document-centric automatic font activation: Though Suitcase doesn’t provide document-level sets, it will automatically activate fonts used in a document, as long as those fonts have been “added” in Suitcase. So, if you open an Excel document that includes some currently inactive fonts, Suitcase will automatically activate them — with no notice or prompting. Gone are the days of having to open and close a document over and over to find and install all the fonts that it might need.

For the main hammer of the design world — QuarkXPress — Suitcase installs Suitcase XT, an extension that works with Apple’s FontSync technology to open missing fonts. When you open a document with missing fonts, Suitcase XT compares the font data in the document with the fonts it finds in your Suitcase sets, and it compares that with a range of unique font characteristics about each font: precise font metrics, font version, kerning tables, font type (PostScript or TrueType), and other details. If a font of the same name in your system doesn’t match the font used in the document, Suitcase warns you with a dialog. This is an important feature for service bureaus or others who share design workflows, because there are multiple versions of fonts bearing the same name out there, and if their metrics are different, unexpected reflowing or other consequences may result if the document is opened using a different font version.

Extensis says it will soon offer similar capabilities for Adobe Illustrator, with a free plug-in scheduled for August.

Other notable new Suitcase features include support for Adobe Multiple Master fonts; improved font conflict handling; and a Collect for Output command that will automatically copy all of a document’s printer and screen fonts to one location for transmittal to a service bureau.

Finally, Extensis also sells Suitcase 10 Server — a comprehensive font-management solution for workgroups. Suitcase 10 and Suitcase 10 Server can work hand-in-hand for groups needing access to a consistently managed set of fonts. Click here for a full review.


Suitcase 10 and Suitcase Server work together in workgroup settings.

Smooth Sailing
Suitcase 10 worked well throughout testing, though you’ll likely notice some awkwardness here and there. For instance, though most programs respond immediately to Suitcase’s font activations, Microsoft Word 2001 sometimes required us to quit and relaunch to gain access to the newly activated fonts. For auto-activation to work correctly in PageMaker 6.5, users must dig into the preferences and set font matching to ATM from the default PANOSE font substitution. (File:Preferences:General, click the Map fonts button, and check the ATM Font Matching radio button.)

At this time, automatic activation doesn’t work at all in Adobe Illustrator 9, but the forthcoming Suitcase plug-in for Illustrator 9 should solve the problem with it.

All in All
Suitcase 10 is a great font-management solution. Though I have one or two interface quibbles, they don’t detract considerably from the everyday usability of the product. I was distressed when I first heard that Adobe would not be updating ATM Deluxe. Now that I’ve looked at Suitcase 10, I’m glad to be making the switch.

Read more by Ben Long.

Editor’s Note: The Extensis Products Group and creativepro.com are owned by the same company, ImageX.

  • anonymous says:

    I feel it necessary to add that “Suitcase XT” has been around since the Suitcase 3.0 days. It was previously sold as a third-party Xtension called Font Fetch by NRG Software (https://www.nrgsoft.com). NRG licensed the code to Font Fetch starting with Suitcase 8. Font Fetch was available before ATM Deluxe, and thus was the first example of font auto-activation.

    Also notable, Suitcase XT has the ability to open fonts that are not opened in EPS images when you go to print. This is a feature not provided by Suitcase 10’s new auto-activation or ATM Deluxe.

  • Al Shultz says:

    It’s great to hear about all the advances in Suitcase 10, but it is presented as the only solution. No mention is made of Font Reserve, which offers, as far as I can tell, all of the Suitcase 10 features and more — and has for some time!

  • anonymous says:

    I have been using Font Reserve for font management since ATM became a problem with the release of OS 9. Early attempts to use Suitcase were never satisfactory. Font Reserve is a stable, no problems font manager.

  • anonymous says:

    I moved to this new version from ATM Deluxe, and I thought the article was very accurate. I love the new interface, the features are easier to navigate than ATM, and the app is extremely stable. Plus, it includes a free download when the OS X version is released!

  • anonymous says:

    I was sent an e-mail from Extensis several days ago advertising the release of this product. Since I’m always looking for better ways to handle my fonts, I rushed over to their site to check it out, and found it isn’t available for the PC–which makes it pretty much worthless to me. I guess I’ll be sticking with Font Navigator

  • anonymous says:

    Unstable and slow. Fonts are often damaged when Suitcase crashes.

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