Font management software reviewed

Extensis Suitcase Fusion – cross-platform font management

Font tool Suitcase seems to have be around for as long as desktop publishing.

Originally a tool for the old 'Classic' version of the Macintosh operating system, Suitcase now comes for OS X and also for the Windows operating system. It is almost certainly fair to say that Suitcase has by far the majority share of the professional font management market.

In truth, the earlier versions of Suitcase for OS X had more than its fair share of problems. But this could also be said for many of the other font managers as they battled with the rather inelegant way that Apple chose for OS X to manage its fonts. But Suitcase has come of age on OS X and also under Windows and has now been released bundled with Font Reserve, a font management tool with some built in troubleshooting tools.

Unlike FontAgent Pro, Suitcase doesn't require any user intervention when it is first installed and will leave your font collection where is. However, Font Vault, a feature new to Suitcase Fusion will allow you to organise your fonts in a more structured way. Suitcase's user interface is easy to understand and building sets of fonts is easy, as is activating those sets of fonts. Like FontAgent Pro, Suitcase also has a server edition.

Like most other font management software, Suitcase will automatically open fonts needed by most system applications and provides plugins for the major graphics applications that require them. A major omission, however, is Adobe Photoshop.

Suitcase doesn't have extensive font diagnostic tools built in, most of this is managed by another Extensis tool called Font Doctor. However, Suitcase will scan your font library for corrupt or duplicate fonts and will highlight any issues. In practice we have found this function to be less than accurate on many occasions, with fonts being identified as corrupt, despite passing tests with other font managers (including Font Doctor) and being used without issue in many programs, printers and pre-press operations.

Overall, Suitcase is still the graphics and design industry standard font manager. But it faces some stiff competition from the latest version of FontAgent Pro.

Suitcase is published by Extensis.

Choosing a font manager > Suitcase > MasterJuggler > FontAgent Pro

4 March 2006

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