Hi Aaron,

What version of Suitcase Fusion are you running? Whatever version, make sure you have all the latest patches. Suitcase Fusion 3 has better performance than SF2, and some of the updates to SF3 improved performance further, IIRC.

I'm not sure why you would even have folders for every family... that's what the "Family View" is for. :) Similarly, you can filter and/or sort by foundry, so I have difficulty imagining a need for a set for each foundry. That being said, with the latest version of the app, you can have many hundreds of sets without any significant performance penalty.

In a couple of places you are using terminology in ways I'm not used to, so I don't quite understand the question. I don't understand what "applying imported type" is... do you mean importing fonts into Suitcase Fusion versus activating in place? There is no performance advantage from leaving them in place.

You say that activating a "large selection" of typefaces takes forever. Can you be a bit more specific? How many fonts is "a large selection"? How long is forever? Otherwise it's hard to know if what you are seeing is unusual, or if the answer is "you usually shouldn't try to activate a thousand fonts at once, and if you must, yes it will take quite a while."

Cheers,

T

Thomas, so I don't require any folder at all just place all families into one directory. And yes I meant by imported type the difference between using the Vault vs Activating in Place.

I own Suitcase Fusion 12.1.7 from when I first purchased my Power Mac in 2007. I don't have the funds to upgrade right now either, I still have OS 10.4.11.

As far as type numbers go, I'm talking around 500 and some change families. As you know many type families have a mayriad of weights, thus having quite an extensive list.

I decided recently to revamp everything, before I would activate only what typefaces I required for a document, but I'm sick of having to go to Suitcase and activate several fonts when working on an identity design that has an obnoxious amount of initial concepts before I narrow down to what type treatment I'm going to select. Or, if I open an annual report I've been working on and likewise must go hunt down and activate type.

I would like the type to either be all active or have the system be intelligent enough to auto-activate what I require. I believe I have to upgrade both my OS to Leopard in addition to upgrading Fusion to do correct?

Thanks,
Aaron

> if I open an annual report I've been working
> on and likewise must go hunt down and activate type.

Suitcase is not auto-activating the type? What application is used to make the annual report?

If I remember correctly, your version of Suitcase should auto-activate for InDesign, Quark, and Illustrator, as long as you've installed the free plug-ins and so forth. The support section of their site has the details and requirements.

Incidentally, they have a downloadable document called something like "best practices for managing fonts" at their site. You can probably find using the search box at their site. It's a long document but a good source of info.

Thanks, I downloaded the document and re-cleaned the Fusion database. I'm using fontdoctor to remove duplicates and grabbing all the type directories and using the organize function to consolidate them to one directory that is organized by foundry, letter, and name.

After I get that all set will then place everything back into Suitcase and hope that gets me where i want to be.

I used InDesign CS4 for the annual report, what are the free plug-ins for auto activating by program moreover, where can I find them for download?

You've got Suitcase Fusion 1. Unfortunately, CS 4 plug-ins are only available for Suitcase Fusion 2 and 3.

Yes, upgrading Suitcase Fusion to a later version would require OS X 10.5 or 10.6.

T