After seven years of developing and updating Suitcase, I have decided to turn over the responsibility for (and work in progress on) development of future versions to Symantec Corporation, Suitcase’s publisher. I will be taking a less-active role in Symantec's online support forums on America Online and CompuServe, although I will continue to monitor those forums and will attempt to assist whenever I feel I can make a unique contribution.
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General News and Information Not in User Manual
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With Suitcase 2.1 and later, user-created sets can now be made “open-at-startup” sets. Double-click on the set name to have its suitcases automatically opened at startup; the set name will be shown in italic. Double-click again to have the set revert to normal (not open-at-startup). Note that the Permanent built-in set is always open-at-startup and thus its name is now always shown in italic.
Suitcase permits other software to open files that are already open with Suitcase. For example, you can use Finder under System 7 to double-click the icon of a font suitcase file and see its contents. Or you can open such files with various utility applications. However, you should NOT modify font files that Suitcase has open. If you want to modify a font file that Suitcase has open, close it with Suitcase first. Also, it is a good idea to open all font suitcases as “shared,” i.e., read-only.
We have received reports that some users are using the “Show All Types“ checkbox in Suitcase’s “Add...” dialog to add Postscript printer font files to Suitcase sets. Such files should NOT be added; the only type of font suitcases that should be added are screen font (bitmap and TrueType) suitcases. “Show All Types” is intended only for unusual cases such as adding keyboard layout files, FKEY files that have file types not recognized by Suitcase, etc.
The rest of this document is relevant only to users of System 7.1 or later
Due to a new feature in the Font Manager in 7.1, it is now possible to split a family among multiple suitcase files, provided that the font number is the same in each suitcase file. That is, if you have Times 9 in one suitcase and Times 10 in another, Suitcase will not report a conflict if both have the same font number. (If the numbers are not the same — i.e., Suitcase reports a name conflict — they can be made the same simply by dragging the closed suitcases into and then out of the Fonts folder in the System folder.) However, only one suitcase (the one most recently opened) will be shown as the file containing Times in the Resources window, and the Show font dialog will show only the sizes/styles present in that one file.
Files should be opened either by being in the 7.1 Fonts folder or by Suitcase, but not both! That is, do not put a suitcase that Suitcase has open, or that is in an open-at-startup set, into the Fonts folder.
Font suitcases that have been packed (compressed) with versions of Font & Sound Valet EARLIER than 1.3 are not compatible with System 7.1. (Font & Sound Valet 1.3 is on the Suitcase 2 product diskette.) One symptom of such suitcases is that Finder 7 will report them as “damaged” when you double-click their icons. Under System 7.0, this was the only problem; under 7.1 there are other more serious problems in using such suitcases. If you have font suitcases packed with an obsolete version of Font & Sound Valet, unpack them (with any version of Font & Sound Valet) and then, if you wish, re-pack them with version 1.3.
