I haven’t left Suitcase yet. My current plan is to stay with 7 as long as I can. If it were just a matter of dumping my library into a new application, I would do it in a hot second. However, I have so much time invested in tagging that I would lose years of careful curation.
Before 8 was released, I was already frustrated with the sluggish performance of version 7. It became utterly unusable when the software would randomly write any minor tag change to their servers, freezing me out the app for minutes at a time. My experience prompted me to reach out more than once to Extensis for help. I remember one interaction with an Extensis support guy with him talking over me with an air of condescension I’ll never forget. He ultimately didn’t know what to say other than my library was too big (I have around 19k fonts). I also asked how to export my classifications/foundries/tags/styles desperate for a way out — they said it can’t be done.
So… when I saw the beta had opened up for version 8, I held off making the move to another font manager (this was early into my tagging adventure, so I didn’t have a lot to lose). I thought version 8 would be the release that stabilized the platform and get its performance on par with other font managers (at least Linotype’s FontXplorer which I use at my day job). I never could have anticipated them degrading the software. And I would have never imagined they would nix the list view.
In the last year I’ve begun to take measures in a valiant effort to break the stranglehold Extensis has over me. I’m doing pre-tagging outside of Suitcase that will hopefully make my fonts more portable. So, a good chunk of my tagged library can be searched in Mac’s OS. It’s not a great solution, but its something.
So, I’m still with 7, and still feel kicked around. I wish there was some kind of battered users group that I could join and share the abuse with other survivors.
