Mac OS X 10.2 suitecase Usage Tips

The main feature of Suitecase is that you can turn glyphs on or off without having to reboot. This feature is a useful feature for desk-typesetting staff or glyph collectors. You can, of course, fill the system folder with a variety of glyphs, but it also eats up a lot of valuable memory. You can open glyphs either individually or in groups. You can set up groups for special work or for a homogeneous font. These groups can be temporarily turned on or off with a program that is specified by the user.

According to Extensis's guidelines, Suitecase 8 is currently fully compatible with Mac operating systems from 7.5.5 to 8.6, and Mac OS 9.0 is somewhat compatible. The Menufonts component in Suitecase is incompatible with OS 9, and there has been no announcement yet as to when there will be a revision. Version 8 also improves the ability to make glyph groups, and can now use AppleScript to establish and control glyph groups (although it can support AppleScript, but does not support AppleScript recording capabilities). AppleScript can create groups, add glyphs, start groups or glyphs, turn off groups and glyphs, and all other things that suitecase can do. Suitecase 8 supports drag-and-drop functionality, so you can simply drag and drop glyphs to create a group.

You can now use the drag-and-drop glyph to the suitecase image to temporarily open the glyph (temporarily opening the glyph is not part of the group so it will not appear in the group window) and can be easily closed when the glyph is finished. Version 8 has a "suitecase fontagent", which is used to search all the glyphs on the hard drive, remove the same glyphs, separate the Turetype and PostScript, and organize the glyphs.

Suitecase now has a "menufonts" program to replace the Suitecase after 3.0 as the resulting glyph menu. The menufonts in Suitecase 8 can display the resulting glyph menu, integrate the same family's glyphs into the stage menu, and provide different dimensions of the glyph, as well as the glyph ID and the corresponding printer name, and so on. Be careful, however, that menufonts is not compatible with similar tool programs like Adobe Type Reunion. Anyway, using more than one similar tool program is just superfluous.

Other new features include the ability to automatically start glyphs under QuarkXPress with the Suitecase 8 XT. This xtension can be very smart--who wants a stupid xtension? --The glyph required to start the QuarkXPress file, even the glyphs required to clamp into the EPS files. The Suitecase 8 XT automatically closes the glyph after exiting the QuarkXPress, avoiding the automatic start up of the glyph to accumulate more.

Please note that you may experience problems when using Adobe ImageReady. Adobe illustrator and InDesign have their own built-in glyph menu features. When menufonts under these procedures you may encounter a situation where the glyphs are not properly organized, and to use Adobe's built-in menu features, add Illustrator and InDesign to the menufonts preset.

Suitecase's menufonts is incompatible with the WYSIWYG functionality that is built into Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect, and you must first turn off the WYSIWYG functionality in these programs before using Menufonts. The Glyph menu toolbar is not supported under Microsoft Office, and to use the Menufonts font menu, select a glyph in the main menu instead of a glyph in the toolbar. Suitecase's menufonts can not change the Font menu to match the Kaleidoscope changed menu.