***FONT ISSUES: How do I create a font repository/server??? ***

Question

Before I explain my font problem, let me first say that I hope that SOMEONE out there/here has good knowledge of fonts, (storage/management/etc.) and can take the time to help me out with my problem. I'd be ETERNALLY grateful for a solution to this problem!! Let me also explain the workflow setup I am coming from. I work at a production company that has 3 edit suites, accessing media from a SAN, managed by FibreJet software. We are running Apple Mac Pro's with 2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon chips, and 8 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM memory. The 3 stations can have READ access to any one drive on the SAN at the same time with no problem, but only one station at a time can have WRITE access to a drive. We each have our own fonts (~2500) on our local systems, and we are all using Extensis Suitcase Fusion 12.1.6 to manage our fonts.
Over the past few months, a couple of projects have reminded us that we have to address a problem in the way we manage our fonts. A project was started in Edit 1 (E1). Footage was loaded, music added and graphics created all in E1. The graphics were made in the Title 3D generator. Near the end of the project, a change had to be made and the original editor and edit suite (E1) was unavailable, so another editor needed to make the change in E2. This is a workflow that we use all the time, and usually don't have a problem. However, this time, when the graphic change was made, either the font that was originally used was missing from E2, or it was not activated. In either case, FCP simply substituted another font in it's place. Unlike Photoshop, FCP does not give any warning when this happens, it just changes the font, so unless you are familiar with the project, you may not know that the change occurred.
As I said, these problems have reminded us that we have to address a problem in the way we manage our fonts. One solution I have thought of would be to consolidate all our fonts onto one of our SAN media drives, and always read that drive. We would then add fonts from this drive, instead of adding from our individual local drives, and hopefully avoiding the "font-switch" problem in the future.
Questions arise, such as: Will Extensis read a font from a SAN drive, or does it have to be local? Will there be a problem with the fact that the drive will be READ only, as opposed to having WRITE access, since all three of us cannot write to the same drive at the same time? Should we just use Apple's own FontBook, instead of Extensis Suitcase, or do we even look into something like Linotype's FontExplorer X, (which I stumbled upon during searches for solutions to our problem)?
If anyone has any answers to my questions, or any solutions we haven't thought of, I'd be very grateful for your help!

Answer 1

Will Extensis read a font from a SAN drive, or does it have to be local?
Here's a bit of information on a SAN setup.
Storage Area Network (SAN) is a high-speed subnetwork of shared storage devices. A storage device is a machine that contains nothing but a disk or disks for storing data. A SAN's architecture works in a way that makes all storage devices available to all servers on a LAN or WAN. As more storage devices are added to a SAN, they too will be accessible from any server in the larger network. In this case, the server merely acts as a pathway between the end user and the stored data.
Because stored data does not reside directly on any of a network's servers, server power is utilized for business applications, and network capacity is released to the end user.
So as I understand it, your Mac's will all see data on a SAN drive array the same as it would a drive that is part of any LAN or WAN. In other words, if activating fonts from a drive on a typical server works, then doing so from a SAN should work the same.
That said, I've never had the opportunity to try it. The easiest way to find out would be to simply drag some fonts into Suitcase that you know are on the SAN storage and see if the activate as you would expect. An issue that may come up is that multiple users may not be able to activate the same fonts at the same time. That wouldn't specifically be a write issue since Suitcase doesn't need to perform a write when opening fonts (other than to update the font cache files on the local drive), but rather if the server considers the files "locked" (in use) to the first user to access them. All depends on how the server is set up, or how Suitcase handles fonts it currently has active. That is, will the server lock the files, or Suitcase, if either?
One solution I have thought of would be to consolidate all our fonts onto one of our SAN media drives, and always read that drive. We would then add fonts from this drive, instead of adding from our individual local drives, and hopefully avoiding the "font-switch" problem in the future.
That would be my first suggestion whether you can read simultaneously read the fonts from the SAN drive or not. I imagine each project is kept in its own folder. Within that, all fonts should be kept together in a single subfolder. An obvious name for that folder is good, such as "Fonts_jobnumber". If Suitcase and/or the server will allow all of you to access the same fonts at the same time, just activate them from the SAN. If not, copy the fonts to your local drive first and then activate.
Should we just use Apple's own FontBook, instead of Extensis Suitcase, or do we even look into something like Linotype's FontExplorer X, (which I stumbled upon during searches for solutions to our problem)?
Font Book is a very weak font manager. It's only advantage in a case like this is that every font you open gets copied to the local drive into one of the two Fonts folder you can designate in its preferences. Then you're always opening the fonts locally. The bad part is that when you use hundreds or thousands of fonts, they all get copied to your Mac as you add fonts. This increases startup times, sometimes dramatically as Font Book has to check all of those fonts during startup against its database to see which should be active and which not. The larger that database gets, the more likely it is to get corrupted.
Suitcase is a far more elegant solution for heavy font usage since you can activate fonts in place. They don't need to be copied anywhere to use them. FontExplorer X can be set up to do the same thing. Depending on what features of Suitcase you use, you may still prefer it over FontExplorer X, even though the latter is free.