Extensis announced Suitcase Fusion, its next-generation, single-user font manager that integrates Extensis’ two leading single-user font managers: Suitcase X1 and Font Reserve 3. The new application combines the user interface and ease-of-use of Suitcase, with the capability and back-end power of Font Reserve, as well as additional font management capabilities and features, Extensis has created a tool uniquely suited to the needs of creative professionals.
This is Extensis’ first product in its next-generation font management software family. Suitcase Fusion is the upgrade path for both Suitcase and Font Reserve stand-alone users, and will allow both sets of users to upgrade their existing font databases to Suitcase Fusion.
Suitcase Fusion, a Mac OS X, single-user font manager, includes a central font repository, face level activation, font corruption checking and font identification technology. Suitcase Fusion provides automatic font activation whenever a user opens a document.
Suitcase Fusion automatically categorizes fonts by classification, foundries, and font families to provide more font information. Additionally, users can create their own classifications and foundries and change them anytime. Suitcase Fusion also provides tools for working with multiple font previews, collecting fonts for output, and organizing fonts via nested sets and keywords.
Suitcase Fusion’s Font Sense technology identifies, locates, and activates the exact fonts used in a document, which Extensis states creates unique identifiers that guarantee font fidelity. According to the company, this enables Suitcase Fusion to be the only font manager that successfully manages multiple fonts with the same name while enhancing the capability of an application to activate the exact version of a font. Font Sense is available in all Suitcase Fusion plug-ins and allows for true font identification within QuarkXPress, InDesign and Illustrator documents.
Suitcase Fusion relies on a centralized font repository called the Font Vault, a managed repository that integrates with the Suitcase Fusion database for better font management–especially when users have multiple versions of fonts with the same PostScript name. The Font Vault utilizes the Font Sense technology to allow true font identification and professional duplicate font management.
Suitcase Fusion also offers improved font handling through Type Face Activation. Suitcase Fusion automatically splits up font suitcases when fonts are added to the Font Vault. By activating fonts on a typeface level, Suitcase Fusion provides users more flexibility and faster font-activation.
Suitcase Fusion users will also receive a free copy of Morrison Software’s Font Doctor 7 for built-in corrupt font detection and repair. Existing Font Reserve users will also receive a separate upgrade application to transfer fonts and metadata from the Font Reserve Single user 3.x database to Suitcase Fusion.
English, French and German versions of Suitcase Fusion are available now by download from the Extensis Web site. Japanese versions of Suitcase Fusion will be available by the end of the first quarter 2006. Suitcase Fusion’s estimated price is $100, for full product and $480 for Suitcase Fusion, five-users. In addition, upgrades to Suitcase Fusion are available for an estimated price of $50 from Suitcase X1 or Font Reserve 3.
Suitcase Fusion will support Mac OS X (v 10.3.9 or higher) and requires a Macintosh G4 or faster, 30 MB of hard disk space and 256 MB of System RAM.