Extensis apparently will not be offering a free upgrade to Suitcase Fusion users who have upgraded to CS4. Unfortunately, if you’d like to continue using auto font activation with InDesign CS4, then you must pay for the Suitcase Fusion 2 upgrade ($49.98).
I’ve been using the previous version of Suitcase Fusion, and it appears as though you can still use it to manually activate fonts on your system and then access them from the font menu in InDesign CS4. However, you will not be able to use auto activation, which allows Suitcase to automatically locate any fonts present in your InDesign documents and activate them for you.
Suitcase Fusion’s auto activation feature relies on a plug-in that must be installed in your InDesign application Plug-ins folder. If you’re not using auto activation, then you’re ultimately responsible for making sure you turn on the correct version of Helvetica next time you open a font-filled InDesign file.
So this brings up a popular argument here at IDS. Is font auto activation really necessary? Is it worth the $49.98 upgrade to Fusion 2? David would probably say no, but I disagree.
I think it depends on what type of work you’re doing in InDesign. If you deal with a lot of fonts on a daily basis, especially if you’re constantly opening ID files from outside sources, or from other members of a design team, then I think auto activation is absolutely essential. If you’re a designer who rarely opens files from outside sources, and who is perfectly content with using the fonts that are installed with the Creative Suite and your system software, then auto activation and font managers in general might be an unnecessary added expense.
Having worked predominantly in print design for mostly newsstand and business-to-business trade publications, I’ve been forced to deal with a lot of fonts. Not only do I own a huge collection of fonts that I’ve assembled over the years and use often in my own creative work, but I’ve also acquired fonts from outside sources, such as advertisers and other designers who have provided native InDesign documents (as well as Illustrator and Quark docs) for me to output. I have so many versions of Helvetica and Times that it’s embarrassing, really. If you’re working with this many fonts, it’s not healthy for your OS to keep them active all the time. A font manager (my favorite being Suitcase Fusion), helps me avoid slowing down my system and resolves duplicate font issues. Font auto activation with Fusion has always worked well for me and I’ve never had a problem with it. There also other features unique to Fusion, such as the ability to add fonts temporarily, which I find very useful.
Note that both versions of Suitcase Fusion are only available for ID users on the Mac OS X platform. Extensis did release a Windows compatible version of Suitcase, titled Suitcase for Windows (not “Fusion”), which contains less features, but does include auto activation, which is very rare in Windows font managers, (and yes, it works well). As of this posting, Extensis has not yet released a CS4 upgrade for Suitcase for Windows. Having not tested Suitcase for Windows with InDesign CS4, I am not sure if an upgrade is even necessary.
This article was last modified on December 13, 2022
This article was first published on October 28, 2008
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