This article was published 9 July 2006. It may be out of date.

Quark VS InDesign.com chronicled the struggle of encumbent desktop publishing application, QuarkXPress, the king of the magazine, newspaper, catalog, advertising, and all other global print publishing hills since the early-1990s, against the new challenger to all its titles, InDesign, Adobe's original, from-the-ground-up layout application born of the minds of those who created PostScript, desktop computer fonts, PageMaker, PDF, and, indeed, the concept of desktop publishing itself. Quark VS InDesign.com (January, 2003 – June, 2009), written by Pariah Burke with contributions from Samuel John Klein and Jeremy Schultz, was the first professionally-written blog devoted to InDesign. It inspired all the ones that came later. Originally scheduled for a mid-June release, Suitcase Fusion 12.1 arrived last Thursday, 6 July 2006. As mid-cycle dot updates go, it’s pretty good.

Suitcase is now the latest application to become compatible with Intel-based Macs, allowing it to run natively on 2006’s PowerBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini generation of Apple Macintosh computers. This, combined with the updated auto-activation xtensions for Intel-Mac native XPress 7, is good news for QuarkXPress users.

If you aren’t a QuarkXPress user, however, or are waiting until Apple releases professional grade desktop systems with Intel chips inside, Suitcase becoming a universal binary is ho-hum. What might catch your interest is its new Transportable Font Vault. Resulting from the combination of Extensis Suitcase and DiamondSoft Font Reserve, which Extensis purchased in 2003, the Font Vault promises–and, for the most part, accomplishes–the elimination of duplicate or corrupt fonts, and takes on the task of organizing fonts on the harddrive. Users merely drag all their fonts into the Font Vault, whereupon fonts are copied into, and managed from the Vault. External font files are no longer needed. Galaga rom download mame for mac. Font Vault stores them inside, and Extensis expects you to delete the original font files from your disk.

It was a great concept, but it had a fundamental flaw: The Font Vault wasn’t portable, and, if it became corrupted, you lost your entire font library. With this latest update, Extensis has made the Font Vault portable. Now it lives up to its promise. The Font Vault, including all contained fonts and any user-created metadata, can now be backed up like any other file, or even copied and deployed across multiple Macs–both Intel- and PowerPC-based. Ever concerned with the security of my clients’ and my own digital assets, my first question was, of course: Then Extensis is easing the task of stealing a company’s entire font library, reducing the places would-be font thieves must search for fonts on the Mac harddrive from five places to one? I was assured, however, that the Transportable Font Vault includes security features to prevent just that sort of thing.

Though, for obvious reasons, Extensis would not go into detail about its anti-theft measures. The 12.1 update also includes more scriptable actions and features via AppleScript, as well as support for Apple’s Migration Assistant.

Extensis Zmi-30063 Suitcase Fusion 3 Stand-alone Software Download

In the working- with-Apple department that’s it, but there’s something else in the update that forceably removes Apple from the font management process. Coyly marketed as a “feature for eliminating unexpected font management issues,” Extensis has added the Competitive Products Manager to Suitcase Fusion. What the Competitive Products Manager does is simple: It deactivates, or locks fonts away from, all other font management utilities, including Apple’s FontBook, which is a native part of OS X since version 10.3. A bold move for Extensis, considering its near total dependence on the Mac platform (see below), the Competitive Products Manager is nonetheless a positive innovation for users who often struggle with unpredictable document font usage and other issues resulting from the double-management of both Suitcase and FontBook. Users can also look forward to slightly faster font activation both within the Suitcase user interface as well as via the auto-activation plug-ins for InDesign, QuarkXPress, and other creative applications.

Lost Luggage, aka the Bad News Last May, in between my sessions at the InDesign Conference in Chicago, I sat down with Halstead York, Extensis’s product manager for Suitcase and the entire Extensis font management line. In addition to a delightful conversation about the future of font management, QuarkXPress versus InDesign in various publishing workflows, and the best place to get a genuine Chicago-style hot dog, we wasted a lot of time talking about Suitcase. York and Extensis were very excited about the upcoming 12.1 update. It’s a good update–for single-user, Mac desktop font management–but it blatantly ignores two very important groups: Windows users and workgroups on either platform.

The latest version of Suitcase Server for Macs is X1 (eleven), released in October 2004, and, worse, Suitcase Fusion is not a compatible client of Suitcase Server X1. While I don’t know the sales figures for Suitcase Server, and Extensis would not disclose them, any creative workgroup with three or more creatives using more than a handful of fonts really should be using server-based font management. Extensis, of course, more or less agrees with me there.

Why then, are stand-alone desktop users the only ones benefitting from features like Font Sense and Font Vault? Sure, individual designers can benefit from these features, but individual designers usually have a better handle on their fonts, and have fewer font version issues, than the members of 5, 10, or fifty-person workgroups. These features were made for workgroup font management, but Extensis isn’t offering them to workgroups. Suitcase Fusion for OS X was launched in January of 2006 without a mention of either an impending update to Suitcase Server or a Windows version of Suitcase Fusion. The 6 July, 2006 press release for the 12.1 update doesn’t mention them either. In fact, a quote from Martin Stein, Director of Product Management, implies that these two products aren’t even high on Extensis’s priority list.

“Extensis is excited to release Suitcase Fusion as a Universal Application, bringing the best performance to both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs,” Stein said. “As an organization focused on its customers, it was imperative to deliver these performance-driven updates. We are focused on providing the same quality update for our digital asset management product, Portfolio, in the near future.” The phrase “bringing the best performance to both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs” reminds me of the original Blues Brothers movie. When rhythm and blues icons Jake and Elwood Blues, desperate for any venue to play, find themselves at Bob’s Country Bunker. They ask the barmaid what kind of live music Bob’s features. “Oh, we got both kinds,” the barmaid responds.

“Country and Western.” Could You Describe Your Missing Bags, Sir? With Fusion being version 12, the current three-year-old version 9 of Extensis Suitcase for Windows is looking particularly long in the tooth. When I asked if he had noticed all the Dell and Sony Windows-based laptops attendees of the InDesign Conference had brought to check their e-mail, follow along with session instructors, and even to do their design work during breaks, York confirmed that he had in fact observed a rise in the number of professional creatives working on Windows in the last few years. He doubted, however, that my experience of having seen Windows in 40% of the creative workflows with which I consulted was typical of the modern landscape.

The problem, York said, is not with the number of Windows creatives but with the number of competing font managers available for Windows. “You mean all the neon-colored, shareware font viewers,” I asked, astounded that the manager of Extensis’s font management product line would draw a comparison to the glut of home-grown downloadables on Tucows.com. His response was a nod. PB: Are Windows users ever going to see an update to Suitcase? HY: Let’s say within a year. Suitcase 9.2.2 might have some trouble with Vista. The Suitcase user interface at least isn’t up to the requirements needed to obtain Microsoft’s made-for-Windows Vista stamp of approval.

Extensis Zmi-30063 Suitcase Fusion 3 Stand-alone Software Update

Surely Extensis will update Suitcase for Vista–won’t you? HY: Well, let’s say within a Vista timeframe we should have a new version of Suitcase for Windows. PB: Will it have all the features of Mac Fusion? HY: I hope so. PB: And Suitcase Fusion Server for both platforms?

HY: Let’s say within a year. When I pressed for more detail regarding the decision to let the next versions of Suitcase Server and Suitcase for Windows wait so long, York reminded me of the numerous applications for Windows he felt were competitors for Extensis’s marketshare. Simultaneously he informed me that Extensis felt the rigors of coding features like Font Vault and Font Sense for Windows were daunting. The underlying operating system architecture that Suitcase relies on to accomplish such tasks, he explained, is vastly different than in OS X, and it’s proving to be a tremendous challenge for the programmers at Extensis. I asked York one last question on the subject: While Extensis is still waiting to update Suitcase Server and the Windows version, now almost two and three years old, respectively, aren’t you worried that someone will come along with their own professional-grade font manager and snatch up those markets? Shrugging, he responded: “Not really.” So, an update to Extensis Portfolio is next while Mac-based workgroups and Windows users meander around baggage claim wondering if their Suitcases were sent to Bora Bora by mistake. The 12.1 update is free from the to registered Mac users of the standalone Suitcase Fusion.

Suitcase for Windows provides the type of industrial-strength windows font management that Windows users need. It is the ideal add-on for Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator and QuarkXPress users who work with fonts daily, speeding your workflow and making your design applications more responsive and reliable. Top Reasons Why You Need Suitcase for Windows: Ensures you have the exact version of the font you need STOPS potential font wrecks (due to missing or substituted fonts) Allows you to work confidently and fluently in design applications Windows Vista Compatible Keeps fonts in one, secure location – easy to find and back-up Main Features Advanced font auto-activation Font Sense powered plug-ins Secure Font Vault repository Vista Compatibility Stand alone version or Client for Suitcase Server X1.