Extensis fuses Suitcase and Font Reserve

Eighteen months after buying Font Reserve developer Diamondsoft, Extensis has combined that application's technology with its own Suitcase suite to create Suitcase Fusion. The Mac OS X-based font management software merges the user interface and ease-of-use of Suitcase X1 with the back-end technology of Font Reserve 3 to create an application that offers the best of both tools, according to Extensis.

Suitcase Fusion is a font management application for single users that features a central font repository, face-level activation, font corruption checking and font identification technology.

The software automatically opens the relevant fonts when a document is opened, so that users don't have to manage font activation manually. This uses Extensis's Font Sense technology, which creates unique identifiers for fonts to allow management of multiple fonts with the same name (or multiple versions of the same font). Font Sense works through Suitcase Fusion plug-ins for use within Illustrator, InDesign and QuarkXpress documents.

All fonts are stored in the central Font Vault, which categorizes fonts by classification, foundries, font families, and user settings. It supports multiple font previews, collection of fonts for output, and the organization of fonts by nested sets and keywords. The applications splits font suitcases so that fonts are activated on a typeface level, which also enables faster font activation, accoding to Extensis.

Suitcase Fusion costs £65 plus VAT and runs under Mac OS X 10.3 or higher. Current owners of Suitcase X1 or Font Reserve 3 can upgrade for £37 plus VAT.