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[glennda]

OSX 10.4.11
Suitcase Fusion 12.1.6 Using Auto Activation and Font Sense
Quark 7.3
InDesign CS3 5.0.3

This is a new position for me, and this company has been having a lot of font problems that I haven't encountered in quite a while. In my previous 2 companies, we used Font Reserve with Auto-Activation off. Operators created job-specific sets and activated fonts as needed.

We are having the following problems:

1. The most obvious: we have multiple versions of the same fonts on our server, and the wrong font opens and we get reflow.

2. We pick up old jobs that use characters like the "greater than or equal to" or "plus or minus" math symbols. The applications see the character as being in the same font as the rest of the paragraph (universe, futura, etc.) but in reality it is coming out of the symbol font. If we don't activate Symbol, the character drops out and we get a blank space. The obvious solution is to load the symbol font, except that opens the door to operator error:

The application does not alert you that the symbol font is not loaded. The font usage does not show symbol as being used. The character is often on a text-heavy page, and the operators don't notice it is missing. Suitcase does not automatically activate the font. When the job is "collected for output" either through the application or Flightcheck, it does not collect symbol even though it is loaded.

3. (I saved the worst for last) More than one operator will work on the same job. Operator A works on a job, using fonts available to Suitcase on their machine. Operator B then opens the job, but the correct fonts are not available to Suitcase on their Mac. Suitcase will then load any available version of a font with the same name. So if Operator A used Postscript Type 1 Helvetica Bold Italic (plain), when Operator B opens the job, the FILE is now changed to use Helvetica.dfont (bold, italic). No warning is given, and unless the operator checks Font Usage immediately, the file is permanently changed when it is saved. We have had fonts change from Helvetica Heavy (plain) to Helvetica.dfont (bold), etc. From what I've been able to track, we have only had this happen in Quark, not in InDesign, but we still receive more Quark files than InDesign because our clients are more corporate than agency, and they are slow to change.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? I would like to hear input on what settings people are using with Suitcase Fusion. We can't use a server version of the application because our IT department is more Windows focused and our work requires a high level of security, so doing anything server-wide will require an act of congress and special papal dispensation.

Any input is greatly appreciated.