Fonts and using Suitcase

I have just installed Extensis Suitcase on my PowerBook G4. When I try to activate any of the fonts (Bowdy for example) I wish to use I get the following message: "There are fonts in the suitcase Bowdy Font that conflict with fonts in the System Fonts folder. You must remove the fonts from the Systam Fonts folder and restart before you can activate these fonts with Suitcase." I used this same program on a slightly older version of OSX on a G4 desk top and had none of these problems. Can someone please explain exactly what I must do to get the fonts to activate in the Suitcase (NOT the Fontbook that comes with the computer.) I will, in the meantime remove the fonts that I have just added to the computer and run programs using only the fonts that came with the computer so it's as it was when I got the computer. (This is a refurbished laptop that I purchased in late June/early July of this year to take to school) Your help is very much appreciated.

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Posted on Sep 29, 2006 2:02 PM

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8 replies

Sep 29, 2006 2:46 PM in response to Templeton Peck

Thank you, but the site for the Extensis forum is not responding or loading. I posted on the Apple site because the Extensis help menu said that if I cannot activate fonts, I needed to remove the fonts from the folder on the Mac. There were no other solutions in any of the help or troubleshooting menus. Since at this time the site isn't working, are there any other suggestions someone can offer me? If it's helpful to answering anything, the computer was purchased in the US...my profile says I'm in Scotland because I'm at school there but in case there might be any differences, the computer is from the US. I'm sure that doesn't matter, but I'm quite desperate for help on this so I'm just giving every bit of info that I can. Thank you again.

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Sep 30, 2006 4:33 AM in response to A A P L

I realize that. I've gone through and manually removed any duplicates, but I'm still getting the same message for every single font that I put in suitcase. I've made new folders and made sure there is only one copy/version or whatever you want to call it in the folders, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference.

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Sep 30, 2006 11:05 AM in response to JLPress

I can think of two things:

1) You've used Font Book and have dupe's still active
2) You didn't get what I said about individual Font Suitcases - not Suitcase the application, but suitcase files that have multiple fonts. If you've got more than one font in a suitcase, and it's somewhere else and active, you'll get errors.

Scott

Oct 1, 2006 12:43 PM in response to A A P L

No, I did understand what you said and I did my best to find all of the multiple fonts. When I go to a folder such as Univers and it's got several different fonts as part of the family, I make sure that I have no other Univers fonts or suitcases that contain Univers fonts, and so on with other fonts. It's quite possible that Font Book is active, but I haven't actually used it because since I bought the computer, I haven't needed to deal with fonts until now. But I have used the computer for more general use and if Font Book runs automatically so that I can read and use fonts in basic applications, then it's most likely running. Would you be able to tell me how I can get Font Book to not be active and so that Extensis is the manager that I can run with my applications?

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Oct 1, 2006 5:00 PM in response to JLPress

Delete any preference (plist) in your users/home/library/preferences folder and reboot.
I personally like the new FontExplorer X from Linotype. It's free and does some neat things.
It allows you to delete font caches and reset your font folders to stock - i.e., removes any non-Apple fonts to a folder on your desktop where you can manage them yourself.
I'd give that a try, personally.
I also have Suitcase and like it, but I'm using the above more now.

Scott

Oct 1, 2006 6:40 PM in response to JLPress

The only way to deactivate Font Book is to delete it.

I believe you're still not quite getting what A A P L is saying about suitcases. A suitcase is, as a simple explanation, a special folder that can hold many font files. A suitcase file may be named Univers, but may, and can contain a few, dozens or hundreds of fonts you can't see. An example would be "Arial Narrow" as installed by OS X. This file is a suitcase of TrueType fonts. Of which, it actually contains four fonts, which are:

Arial Narrow
Arial Narrow Bold
Arial Narrow Italic
Arial Narrow Bold Italic

Since OS X, it has been very difficult to open these suitcase files. But in OS 9 and earlier, it was very easy. People, and lazy designers (as A A P L mentioned) routinely put all kinds of unrelated fonts into a single suitcase. So loading a suitcase named Copperplate could easily also contain Helvetica, Symbol, Courier and any number of other fonts that will conflict with fonts in the System folder.

As far as I know, Suitcase Fusion is the only font manager that will not only show you what fonts are grouped inside a suitcase, but also let you enable only the ones you want. With all other managers, including all previous versions of Suitcase, you can only activate the whole thing. So if there are any conflicting fonts within a suitcase, you can't avoid opening them.

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Fonts and using Suitcase

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