Suitcase Fusion 3 User Guide for Mac OS - Extensis

Disabling Other Font Managers
To ensure the proper operation of Suitcase Fusion, it is important to disable or uninstall any other font managers.
Running more than one font manager at a time can cause unpredictable results and system instability.
When launched, Suitcase Fusion automatically attempts to disable other font managers. To be sure, you may
want to remove and/or manually disable other font managers.
Just closing or quitting other font managers might not be sufficient. Many font mangers, including Suitcase
Fusion, run an application in the background that manages font activation and deactivation. These background
applications must be disabled before running Suitcase Fusion. To do so, disable any application preferences
that tell the other font management application to launch on startup or login and then restart your computer.
Check your Account in System Preferences for any login items that may launch automatically.
NOTE
On Mac OS X v10.5 and later, Suitcase Fusion disables Font Book auto-activation which can interfere with
Suitcase Fusion. However, you will need to manually disable another option in Font Book.
1. From the Applications folder, launch Font Book.
2. Choose Font Book > Preferences.
3. Disable Alert me if system fonts change.
4. Close the Preferences window and quit Font Book.
When this option is enabled, Mac OS X will automatically place “protected” fonts back into your system font
folders even if you remove them. It also can prevent a professional font manager from effectively managing or
overriding your system fonts.
Understanding Fonts
Fonts are an integral part of a computer’s operating system, as well as necessary for every application and
document that you use on your computer. There have been a wide variety of electronic font types developed
over the years. These font types were created for a variety of reasons—better output at the printer; better and
more consistent display on computer monitors, more consistent compatibility across multiple platforms, and so
on.
Not all font types are created equal, and cannot necessarily be used interchangeably in all situations. Suitcase
Fusion supports popular font types, from PostScript and TrueType to OpenType. For more information about
font types and font history, Extensis recommends downloading the Adobe Typography Primer from:
http://www.adobe.com/education/pdf/type_primer.pdf.
To get a better understanding of the best practices for managing fonts on Mac OS X, Extensis recommends
downloading the Font Management in Mac OS X Best Practices Guide from the Extensis website:
http://www.extensis.com/fmbpg/.
Suitcase Fusion and WebINK Web Fonts
You may have noticed that many websites share the same tired look for their text content. This is because web
developers restrict themselves to using a limited set of common “web fonts” in order to ensure their pages
display properly in most situations.
Recent advances in browsers and web standards allow web developers to use fonts that are not necessarily
installed on the end user’s computer. This is done by including a style sheet that references a font that resides
on a web server. The font doesn’t even need to be on the same server that hosts the website!
This opens up a whole new world of typographic possibilities for web developers and even the “weekend
webmaster.” Fonts can be hosted on a web server and used in as many different scenarios as you can imagine.
Up until now, hosting fonts on a web server has been problematic if not impossible for many. Will your web host
allow you to upload fonts? Does your font license allow you to share the font in this way? Do you have the
correct formats for all available browsers? How can you prevent others from illegally using the font that you have
purchased?
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