ATR-compatible Suitcases


ATR (Adobe® TypeReunion®)-compatible suitcases are Mac PostScript Type 1 fonts in suitcases that are linked in a particular “smart” way. For example, four styles of the New Century SchoolBook font family are organized as follows: The Regular suitcase contains four styles (regular, italic, bold and bold-italic style). The Italic suitcase contains two styles (italic and bold-italic). The Bold suitcase contains two styles (bold and bold-italic). Finally, the BoldItalic suitcase only contains bold-italic style. All 4 suitcases are defined as separate families but saved in one suitcase file. As a result you see, for example, one suitcase file “NewCenturySchlbk” and four PostScript font files:



But internally there are 4 families with 9 entries referencing 4 PostScript fonts.

Fontlab Studio 5 has a special option for building ATR-compatible suitcases:



TransType 4


When you open an ATR-compatible Mac PostScript Type 1 font family in TransType 4 it shows the internal structure of the font suitcase:



There are actually four fonts—shown as nine.

If you export the font to modern formats as is you will get errors installing the font. TransType 4 also may lose kerning information when it exports this way.


To export this font correctly, you have to reorganize the family and remove extra font references:

  • Look at the source files and count the actual number of PS fonts. There are four fonts in our example.
  • Leave the styling group containing all 4 styles and remove other styling groups. In our example, leave “New Centuru Schlbk” group with 4 styles and remove other 3 incomplete groups.
  • Select each of the font entries and correct their Style names by removing “2” or whatever numbers they got on import.



Now you can export your family to OpenType font family.


FontLab VI


FontLab VI opens ATR-compatible Type 1 suitcases the similar way. So you need to manually remove extra entries and rebuild the family structure.