Universal Type Server – Creating and Sharing Font Sets

Extensis’ Universal Type Server brings your fonts into a single centralised font store. This ensures your fonts are consistent across your studio, reduces font conflicts and does away with hunting for missing fonts. Fonts and shared Font Sets are automatically synchronised to users, ensuring that everyone is working with the latests fonts. The Universal Type Client is the user interface with the servers fonts and has the same basic look and feel of Suitcase Fusion 2.

Here are a few quick tips for creating and sharing font sets with Universal Type Client.

Creating new Fonts Sets

Highlight the font workgroup that you wish to make the new set within. To create a new font set click on the blue ‘Create a new set’ button in the bottom left.

Enter a name for the font set, now you can drag fonts from within the workgroup to the font set.

To remove a font from a set, just highlight the font and press Delete.

To activate all fonts within the set at once, highlight the Font Set then click the blue Temporary or green Permanent button on the top left.

Create Font Sets from within InDesign

This is useful if you have a document open containing all of the fonts for a particular client, project or publication. Open an appropriate document and ensure all fonts are active. From the ‘Type’ menu go down to ‘Universal Type Client’ and select ‘Create Document Set…’.

When prompted enter a name for the Font Set and click ‘OK’. The new set will appear in Universal Type Client containing all active fonts from within the current document.

Sharing Font Sets

If people are working on common projects it can be very useful to create and share a common font set to all users. All users can create their own sets, but to share a set to all users you need to be a Font Administrator.

Using the Universal Type Client, highlight the set that you wish to share, then right-click and from the drop-down menu select ‘Share Set’.

You can add and remove fonts, rename or unshare font sets and the changes you make flow down to everyone after the next synchronisation.

Snow Leopard software update

We have been testing all current applications with Snow Leopard and have a few updates which you might find useful.

• Suitcase Fusion 2 has just been updated for Snow Leopard.
• Kerio have a beta for Kerio MailServer that adds Snow Leopard iCal support.
• Cyberduck also has a Snow Leopard beta update out too.

We expect a 10.6.1 to arrive soon – which will improve on the release day version. We are finding the speed of Snow Leopard to be noticeable and well worth the upgrade over Leopard. Stayed tuned!

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

As of Friday, Mac OSX Snow Leopard has been released. It is a release highly focused on delivering performance and reliability gains rather than flashy new features. I think this is a great approach as most people just want their Macs to run well and don’t need extra little gimmicky features added that offer little to increase productivity.

A lot of software will be Snow Leopard compatible without any further updates required, some software will require small updates to become compatible and some software will not be supported on Snow Leopard.

Expect a deluge of updates over the next few weeks and months to address any known or unexpected compatibility issues with Apple’s latest version of Mac OSX. Most software developers will have or will be working to have their latest versions of software up to date and compatible with Snow Leopard, however previous versions of software are not high on the priority list for most developers, who are unlikely to be investing the time and resources on software that they designed to work on earlier versions of Mac OSX. Software developers are encouraging users to update to the latest version for compatibility in addition to gaining the advantage of the software’s latest features.

Snow Leopard itself is compatible only with Intel Based Macs.

If you are upgrading to Snow Leopard or are buying a new Mac then it is recommended to upgrade your additional software to the latest versions. If you are upgrading straight away then you might run into a few minor issues that should be addressed as soon as software developers are able.

Compatible software includes;
Adobe CS4 (Some minor issues exist)
Microsoft Office 2008 (Seems OK)
Quark 8
Parallels 4 (Latest build required)
Toast 9 & 10 (Some minor issues exist)
Overflow (Update just released)
Firefox
CrashPlan
Most current versions of Apple software

Software that will require an update includes;
Extensis Suitcase Fusion 2 (update expected within 30 days)
Extensis Universal Type Server 2 and Client 2 (update expected 30 – 60 days)
Kerio MailServer (working on 6.7.2 update to include Snow Leopard iCal compatibility)
Cyberduck (working on an update)
Nortons AntiVirus 11
Many printer drivers and utilities

Unsupported Software includes;
Adobe CS3 (and earlier). Adobe CS3 may work with some minor issues present, but there will be no further updates and it is officially unsupported by Adobe.
Extensis Suitcase Fusion and earlier
Quark 7 and earlier
Parallels 3 and earlier
Toast 8 and earlier