Extensis Unveils Universal Type Server

Today at MacWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, Extensis, mak­ers of Suitcase and Font Reserve, as well as Suitcase Server X1 and Font Reserve Server, will unveil an all new server-based font man­age­ment sys­tem. Universal Type Server (UTS) runs on Windows and Macintosh servers, con­nects to Windows and Mac (PPC and Intel) clients, includes all the best fea­tures of both Suitcase Server and Font Reserve Server, and is faster than you ever imag­ined a font man­ag­er could be.

Let me estab­lish some­thing right off the bat: I dig the lat­est ver­sions of Extensis Suitcase–Fusion (ver­sion 12) on Mac OSX and Suitcase for Windows (ver­sion 11). They aren’t per­fect, and I have my gripes. For instance choos­ing between acti­vat­ing fonts per­ma­nent­ly or only until the sys­tem is reboot­ed requires remem­ber­ing a key­board short­cut or chang­ing a pref­er­ence every sin­gle time a font is acti­vat­ed. (Do you know how many key­board short­cuts the aver­age design­er has to remem­ber?! Well, yeah, I sup­pose you do.) Although not per­fect, the cur­rent ver­sions of Suitcase fit my font man­age­ment needs bet­ter than any oth­er font man­ag­er on either plat­form. For many of the pub­lish­ing and pro­duc­tion work­flows I’ve opti­mized or con­sult­ed upon, Suitcase Server is also the best avail­able solution.

Sure, Suitcase takes a moment or two to start­up on stand­alone desk­tops and even longer to make con­nec­tions with a Suitcase Server. Of course there’s an ever so slight delay between chang­ing a pre­view type or size and see­ing the change reflect­ed in the pre­view pane. Adding more than a cou­ple of new fonts takes time, too, naturally–sometimes quite a lot of time–but then, Suitcase is not only index­ing the fonts but ana­lyz­ing them as well, stor­ing them in the Vault for pro­tec­tion (if the user has enabled that fea­ture). Fonts pushed to clients from the serv­er will get there some­time in the next few min­utes. Heck, for all the lit­tle paus­es and delays, Suitcase does it’s job pret­ty quick­ly. I had come to terms with that fact, with using the delays as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rest my eyes, stretch my legs, or sip my cof­fee. I was com­fort­able with all that. I was grate­ful that Suitcase and Suitcase Server work as fast as they do.

Then, I saw Universal Type Server.

Faster than a Speeding Bullet Glyph

Do you remem­ber when you upgrad­ed from a 56k modem to broad­band Internet access? Whether you logged on for that first mar­velous moment at the office or home, sure­ly you remem­ber the awestruck grin that slow­ly split your face from ear to ear as the Web was sud­den­ly just there. No wait­ing. No pic­ture place­hold­ers to even­tu­al­ly be replaced by pic­tures. One sec­ond NYTimes​.com or Designorati​.com or Quark VS InDesign​.com was­n’t there, the next it was. If you’re like me, in that moment you felt like thrust­ing your fist into air and yaw­ping in tri­umph, shout­ing to Mount Olympus: “I… have… the pow­er!”

Oh, yeah, see­ing Extensis’ Universal Type Server the first time is like that.

Built from the ground up as a whole new server/client font man­age­ment sys­tem, UTS is a blaz­ing­ly fast Java-based serv­er fronting an ultra sta­ble, light-overhead SQL data­base. It’s com­plete­ly cross-platform, with the Universal Type Server run­ning on Windows- or Mac-powered servers and con­nect­ing to either or both Windows- and Mac-hosted Universal Type Clients. For Macs, both UTS and UTC are Universal Binaries, run­ning under either PowerPC or Intel proces­sors. It’s the use of mod­ern, open archi­tec­ture tech­nolo­gies that enables the speed.

The client starts up instant­ly. No delay. It’s just there. Fonts are acti­vat­ed or deac­ti­vat­ed in a blink. And font pre­views? Truly real time live pre­views. Change the pre­view text or point size and the pre­view win­dow updates with­out even a frac­tion of a sec­ond delay. And, that’s not just fonts on the local com­put­er. That’s with fonts from the serv­er. Instantaneous pre­views across the net­work, with­out the fonts installed or local­ly cached. New fonts are ana­lyzed, indexed, and added before I can find a dis­tant object to rest my eyes upon.

I was shown a sta­ble beta ver­sion and cau­tioned that it might not be as fast as the ship­ping release. That notion makes me laugh out loud. How much faster can you get than instantaneous?

Suitcase is a 56k dialup modem. It’s scream­ing fast, but only until some­one builds a broad­band font man­ag­er. Universal Type Server is a broad­band con­nec­tion. When UTS is released this spring it will break the speed lim­it you did­n’t even know was slow­ing you down.

A Classically Sleek Chassis Meets Superior Handling

[Click image to zoom] Universal Type Client run­ning on Mac OSX.

At first glance the Universal Type Client looks very much like the cur­rent ver­sions of Suitcase. All my favorite parts are there. Multiple panes pro­vide con­cur­rent access to user- or administrator-built font sets, font details with con­fig­urable data columns, and the pre­view pane. New is the Attributes pane, which lets the user clas­si­fy fonts by clas­si­fi­ca­tion, key­word, foundry, file type, and/or style direct­ly in the main appli­ca­tion rather than through clum­sy pop-up dia­log box­es. Just select one or more fonts (con­tigu­ous or not), and check the box beside the key­word, style, or oth­er desired attribute in the Attributes pane. Assuming that your UTS admin­is­tra­tor has giv­en you per­mis­sion to affect font attrib­ut­es, the new data is added to the SQL data­base and instant­ly reflect­ed on the serv­er and all clients con­nect­ed to it. The font list can even be fil­tered and sort­ed by any of the attrib­ut­es. Spotlight-like live search enables rapid search­ing of a large list of fonts for a par­tic­u­lar name, class, foundry, or family.

Gone are the New Set, Add, Remove, Activate, Deactivate, and Attributes but­tons from Suitcase’s tool­bar. In their place are the three most impor­tant buttons–Activate (per­ma­nent­ly), Temp Activate (until sys­tem restart or until dis­con­nect­ing from the serv­er), and Deactivate. Finally! Permanent and tem­po­rary acti­va­tion options have been restored to one-click sim­plic­i­ty. The Attributes pane takes care of man­ag­ing font attrib­ut­es while the oth­er func­tions have been moved to the menu bar. Fonts can also be added via drag and drop if enabled for the user.

Connecting to the serv­er is sim­ple and can be done on the local net­work or across the Internet, which will help remote and trav­el­ing employ­ees keep fonts in synch with the office. Server admin­is­tra­tors can even allow fonts to be copied to client sys­tems so work­ers can use them with­out main­tain­ing a live con­nec­tion. (So much for relax­ing on that long flight.)

UTC includes the Font Sense auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe InDesign CS2/CS3 and Illustrator CS2/CS3 and QuarkXPress 6.5/7 that have become stan­dard with Suitcase, but there’s a new fea­ture by pop­u­lar request–auto-activation even if the UTC isn’t run­ning. According to Extensis, many cus­tomers com­plain that they must keep Suitcase run­ning in mem­o­ry to main­tain access to fonts. UTC no longer requires the appli­ca­tion to be run­ning. If non-active fonts are required upon open­ing a doc­u­ment in one of the sup­port­ed appli­ca­tions, the auto-activation plug-in or xten­sion will call to the Universal Type Client, acti­vate the need­ed font, and then close the client, free­ing any sys­tem resources it would oth­er­wise con­sume. Support for auto-activation from with­in Adobe InCopy is planned for a future release.

Common Server Sense

The Universal Type Client is excel­lent, a clean, unclut­tered inter­face with agile steer­ing and plen­ty of horse­pow­er (I did men­tion it’s fast, right?). But the real dif­fer­ence between the UTS/UTC sys­tem and Extensis’ cur­rent font man­age­ment offer­ings is on the server.

Suitcase Server and Font Reserve Server are appli­ca­tions near­ly iden­ti­cal to their clients. They run on a serv­er con­sum­ing sys­tem resources they should­n’t. Does the aver­age design or pro­duc­tion work­flow need advanced font man­age­ment for use on the serv­er itself? Of course not; no one designs on the serv­er. Instead, a font man­age­ment serv­er should be light, easy to con­fig­ure, and focused on the tasks of admin­is­ter­ing users and their access to fonts. That’s Universal Type Server.

[Click image to zoom] The Universal Type Server main inter­face show­ing work­groups, roles, users, and permissions.

UTS is a com­plete break from past serv­er font man­agers. It’s entire­ly Web-based, mak­ing it acces­si­ble on the serv­er itself as well as remote­ly from any autho­rized work­sta­tion or mobile device. An art direc­tor work­ing on a project can cre­ate font sets and assign them to users from her own desk while the IT depart­ment keeps the serv­er itself safe­ly under lock and key. In fact, an admin­is­tra­tor can access the serv­er from any­where in the world via the Internet. Need the intern autho­rized on the Acme account fonts at 11 PM? Call the pro­duc­tion man­ag­er at home. (Managers and direc­tors remem­ber to turn off your cells on vacation!)