Rediscover Typography with Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2

Theresa Stone

Extensis, a brand of Celartem Inc., today released Suitcase Fusion 2, its next generation solution for single-user font management. Giving creative professionals total control, absolute precision and maximum flexibility at all times, Suitcase Fusion 2 creates an entirely new font management environment through a completely redesigned user interface and code base. Suitcase Fusion 2 is available immediately for download from the Extensis website.
Built on the stable platform used for the Extensis Universal Type Client, Suitcase Fusion 2 brings together ground-breaking technology with a sleek modern interface. The result is a progressive application that provides precise font activation, outstanding font previews, and advanced corruption checking and repair in an extremely stable and easy-to-use font management system.
“If you think you know font management, you owe it to yourself to check out Suitcase Fusion 2,” said Brian Berson, General Manager at Extensis. “Don’t let the name fool you into believing this product is simply an upgrade. Suitcase Fusion 2 has been written from scratch utilizing the most innovative technology to achieve a modern interface and a stronger, more robust backend. This fresh, new product takes the effort out of font management leaving you with time to rediscover and enjoy your font collection.”
Suitcase Fusion 2 not only continues the tradition of professional font management capabilities, but also focuses heavily on the creative aspects of typography with a host of features that allow users to really appreciate their type. By using Suitcase Fusion 2’s Glyph View Palette users can easily preview and navigate through potentially thousands of glyphs within a single type face, compare and ultimately select the most ideal font for the project. The innovative Floating Preview feature allows creative professionals to literally drag-and-drop type previews directly onto a layout for easy comparison and selection. Suitcase Fusion 2 also allows users to view multiple fonts side-by-side and dynamically zoom the point size up-and-down on the fly. In addition, users are able to print font previews to further compare font choices.
Also included in Suitcase Fusion 2 are all new auto-activation plug-ins that automatically turn fonts on and off within the professional creative applications users leverage every day. Plug-ins and XTensions are available for the newly-released Adobe InDesign CS4, Adobe Illustrator CS4 and QuarkXPress 8, as well as for Creative Suite 3 software applications and QuarkXPress.
Auto-activation operates in the background and provides creative professionals with the ability to seamlessly work in their chosen applications while automatically activating the exact fonts by utilizing Extensis’ proprietary Font Sense™ font matching capabilities feature. Font Sense creates a unique ID for each font – like font fingerprinting – to ensure font consistency as documents move from design through production.
“Adobe Creative Suite 4 and Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2 work together to deliver the seamless workflow our mutual customers expect,” said Thomas Phinney, product manager, Fonts and Global Typography at Adobe. “The plug-ins activate the fonts they need instantly, without the user having to manually find and activate them.”
Suitcase Fusion 2 Highlights
• All-new intuitive and customizable interface, built with state-of-the art technology.
• SQLite backend for faster performance and increased stability.
• Built for Leopard, with auto-activation plug-in support for Illustrator CS4 and InDesign CS4 and QuarkXPress 8.
• Exact font matching with plug-in based auto-activation powered by Font Sense.
• Amazing multiple font previews that adjust in size on the fly for faster font comparison and selection.
• Discover type faces by displaying all available glyphs with the new Glyph View Palette.
• Experiment with fonts by overlaying font previews over any document using the new interactive Floating Previews.
• Preview how different glyphs and ligatures will display, allowing users to see all of the characters available in a chosen font.
• Uninterrupted font management even when Suitcase Fusion is not active.
• Avoid conflicts and other system font issues with smart system font management.
• Advanced font organization with classification auto-assignment and Smart Sets.
• Easily find fonts by conducting robust dynamic searches based on metadata information such as classification, foundry or custom keywords.
• Obtain a clean font library by detecting corrupt fonts and repairing them before adding font information to the secure database.
• Ability to print a multitude of user defined font previews and sizes straight from preview pane.
Pricing and Availability
English, French, and German versions of Suitcase Fusion 2 are now available for download from the Extensis website at https://www.extensis.com/en/suitcasefusion2. Suitcase Fusion 2 is available at an estimated retail price of US $99.95, for full product and for an estimated retail price of US $49.98 for upgrades from Suitcase X1 or newer. Volume licensing and annual service agreements available upon request.
System Requirements
Suitcase Fusion 2 will support Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard); Power PC G5, Intel or faster processor; 256 MB RAM; 50 MB Hard Drive space + space for fonts; Safari 2.0 or Firefox 2.0 or higher.