Hello there,

As a large company we pride ourselves on consistency and quality of work. Having used OSX for over a year and a half, we are still having problems with certain fonts that seem to corrupt, that is turn bitmapped on ripping after the Mac has been restarting. The only way to sort out this problem is to empty the user font folder – disable all in the fontbook, restart the Mac and then delete the fonts from the trash and then re-add them to fontbook again!! Also the Mac takes about 15 minutes to restart when there are a larger amount of fonts in the fontbook?

any advice would be appreciated...

Dean Brooksbank
Pre-Press Supervisor
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*this anonymous user account is used to post prepress forums user and customer inquiries for others to see and respond to.

Hello Dean, I would recommend that you get past fontbook and get a real professional level font manager like Suitcase X1. Suitcase X1 comes with FontDoctor which can eecute repairs on MOST types of font corruption. Before we talk about the Suitcase X1 upgrade and using FontDoctor X let's get into your font corruption issues in more detail. You stated that the fonts default out top a bitmap low res jaggy type. Do you get any font corruption messages from applications. There may be additional font related questions to deal with before moving on to the Suitcase X1 recommendation.
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mostly into: my mac G5 dual 2.5Ghz, Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Acrobat Distiller, Print Planet, Adobe Illustrator CS, and Quark Xpress, free font downloads, prepress forums

Thanks for your response. We have always shyed away from using suitcase, ever since they changed the format from when it was the good old reliable version 3. What we found is that it put fonts everywhere, and was forever complaining about clashing fonts. In short we had no results with it, and we spent a few hours trying to get an accurate job out. When I 'discovered' Fontbook all out problems disappeared. That is however until, we have one particular customer who uses a wide range of Helvetica fonts (nue) and everytime the mac has been restared the font goes jaggy when ripped. (It looks OK on screen at first glance)...... Very annoying when all the job comes out on proof with bad typeface. We do have several copies of Suitcase VI but have not dared to use it again.

Hi Dean,

Suitcase work very well with OS X and is definitely the preferred tool, just like it was back in the day. It has had some significant changes that, if not configured right, will be a pain in the butt. I have it on over a dozen robot macs at work, and support hundreds of users, 90% on Suitcase I'd say. If it aint working, you got to just get to the bottom of why and how. It has auto activation support and so much more that is tremendous if set up correctly. I'd recommend putting Suitcase X1 on a mac and we can step through how I configure Suitcase. I just installed two new licenses today and see that it does NOT come with FontDoctor X, but as soon as you get Suitcase configured, you need that. Build a perfect library with no conflicts, duplicates, or corruptions, stray pairs, etc. Then put that same on all your machines, set auto activation. Viola! I'm not sure if you've already read my Font Management Page but if not, that's very important stuff about fonts and OS X.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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Thanks for your reply, just before I do install Suitcase 11, do you think it will be alright for use with many different customers work? we don't have a standard font library because all our customers supply their own fonts and we just add them to fontbook. When the mac slows sown we delete all the fonts and start all over.

the best way to fix your font problems is to use Linotype Font Explorer. it is a free download from linotype and handles fonts in mac os x perfectly. none of the carry on with suitcase and trying to load fonts, or problems with duplicate fonts. save yourself a lot of grief and don't bother using suitcase

Hello Rossde,

Welcome to the group. I should probably commit a machine to test and review Linotype Font Exporer . It is relatively new and I have merely glanced at it. Tell me though, does it have a Quark Xtension, an InDesign and Illustrator PlugIn to automatically activate required fonts on the fly? Does it have actual organization and repair facility equal to FontDoctorX? I think I'll download it today and have one of my guys load it on a machine, check it out.

I have recommended Suitcase for years because it is the most standard. Except for a stint there in Mac OS evolution, I think OS 8 or 9 release where Suitcase did not keep up, switched over to ATM for awhile, Suitcase had no answer for us. I recommend Suitcase because I have to support hundreds of users all over the world. I have been supporting large user or customer base for years, since before Linotype Font Explorer hit the scene.

Dean, to answer your question, yes, of course. I run a prepress ina $30 million a year commercial printer. Aside from my day job, every customer I have is either a magazine publisher with ads coming from all over, or a prepress with jobs from all over. I use Suitcase every day 9myself0 and I don't have any font problems that aren't easy to resolve or identify quickly. I have trained hundreds of operators in hundreds of organizations over the years and left them in perfect font harmony. It's a little more to do by email and the web, but since I can't do onsite anymore, it's my only venue. So, here's what I do, I'll try to lay it down, just takes a little time to write it all out here.

(1) I have a main, clean organized library that represents safe reliable verified fonts. This is not just my fonts, but represents every font from every customer, as current as possible. I regularly add and fonts, sort, organize, verify. I am talking about tens of thousands of clean, ready fonts. I use FontDoctor X to build and maintain that library.

(2) Then, as a job comes in, I run FontDoctor X on the customer's furnished files. I sort organize and verify their fonts into a new font folder, I duplicate their submitted fonts as I organize, always, into a new clean reliable set of what they sent. Goes right back into that job folder. I NEVER see a clean organized set of fonts come in with a job. I take about 30 seconds to do that with FontDoctor X as I load a job into my system. All collect for output methods EXCEPT FLIGHTCHECK are flawed. So, if you take a customer's collect for output from Quark or InDesign and think it's OK to just use it, you're hosed right out of the gate. The set will collect incomplete screen fonts not required which will immediately cause other fonts to not work. You gotta know that, if you use FontDoctor X, you'll see that on first job you do this way.

(3) Before I activate any fonts for a new job, I make sure Quark, InDesign, and Illustrator are Quit. Then my first step in actually working and reviewing files of an incoming job is to activate the incoming fonts that I JUST organized

(4) Before Opening any files, it's fonts first with all my layout and editing Apps quit.. I ONLY ADD JOB FONTS AS TEMPORARY (command + T) or File>Add Temporary, that's important.

If you start opening next jobs files before closing out apps and fonts from last job, you are going to create font problems for yourself.

If you add job fonts any other way but temporary, suitcase will remember that font in it's database. So, suitcase database must ONLY have your Clean Main Library in it's memory (database)

To run suitcase successfully in a busy environment, the Suitcase database must be cleaned and kept clean. Suitcase remembers every font ever used, where it is, whether it was good, bad, or is even still on your server.

(5) I use submitted job fonts first, activate what customer sent. If I am missing anything, I go to my Main Font Library for a clean orderly, verified font, use that. But, since I have my MAIN font library set to auto activate, and Suitcase does that well, these missing fonts get activated on the fly. I don't even bother the customer if I have a copy of the font in my library. I Go, get the job out. I run the job with PDF-X-Robot, it embeds and subsets all fonts, locked in. Check my proofs carefully for any issues, reflow etc., very rarely any issue there.

(6) After I run a job, I deactivate all fonts by quitting and relaunching Suitcase. I always Quit Quark Xpress, InDesign, and Illustrator after each customer job is worked.

I think that's about it. I rely on automation, auto activation, organization, verification, and a very very clear understanding of:

(a) How suitcase works, completely, it's database, auto activation method, etc.

(b) How font collection from Quark and InDesign works/doesn't work

(c) How fonts activate, deactivate, and are seen or not seen by Quark, InDesign others. Timing and chain of events as you work a new job are VERY IMPORTANT.

(d) How to totally control my font usage, by controlling font locations on my HD

Some of this important stuff you can read in my very popular web page on Font Management in OS X

When I have the time, I plan on publishing my font settings for all apps, QuarkXpress , InDesign , Suitcase, FontDoctor X. And more detail on issues in this post. I stay so busy it's hard to find the time but you can always ask for specifics here on the forum, either me or one of my users can help out.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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hi joepostscript
as you would know by now, yes it does have plugins for auto activation in all the major apps. it has the ability to use sets without ending up with duplicate fonts, or fonts can be opened individually, but it does not have a font repair utility that i am aware of.

Since 10 days released, 500+ users, NEW free PreFlight

Hello, just letting you know that FreeFlight is relesed and you can download it on the FreeFlight Download forum. Must be ( member + 1 post ) to get the download. We are at over 500 users since 10 days released and the software is doing well. I have been using it for a few months before release. The software is a free application, easy to use, and fast.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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Wind Turbine Buyer's Guide


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