limit Library to fonts in system folder and actively attached folders

MainType - Font Manager MainType - Support
1

Use Case:
The user is reviewing various folders of fonts. User adds the folders in MainType to review the fonts, then removes the folders.
User also wants to remove these folders’ fonts from the Library. User wants the Library to only represent, at any given time, (a) the font folders actively attached to MainType, and (b) the system fonts folder.

Instead, MainType seems to keep all fonts it has ever encountered in the Library, which has now made a mess for the user. It becomes extremely difficult to figure out how to manually remove these fonts after having added and removed numerous folders.

How can the user achieve the desired results?

2

I suggest creating a group when adding a folder.

Then it is easy to delete all of the fonts from the group and delete the group. If you want to keep any of the fonts, remove them from the group before selecting the others for deletion. This option permanently removes the fonts from the MainType vault and database, and from your hard drive.
Permanently Delete Fonts.png

3

Bhikkhu Pesala, thanks for the quick response.

If the user wants to fully remove the group from MainType, but wants to keep the fonts on the hard drive (because they are a part of multiple temporary-use collections), what is the best strategy?

Essentially, the user wants the MainType Library to only represent the current “in use” fonts, not every font that MainType has ever processed. But the user doesn’t want to have to delete fonts from the hard drive in order to achieve this.

4

You can also use the Ignore feature from the Edit menu. This way the font will be hidden from your library.

5

Erwin, thank you.

Yes, the problem is: Let’s suppose the user has already added and removed a dozen folders with a few hundred fonts in them each.

At this point, the user doesn’t remember exactly which fonts in the Library came from which folders. Therefore, the user doesn’t know which fonts to select to Ignore.

How would that user tell MainType: “Pare down the Library to only those fonts which are currently (a) installed in the system fonts folder, and (b) attached to MainType via additional folders.” ?

6

You could temporary add a Tag to all fonts you want to keep. This will only work if you use sync folders.

So in your case select Active Fonts, then select all and give them the Tag “KeepMe”.
Now do the same for all the root folders in the Groups panel.

Now in the Tag Search panel, select Tag named “KeepMe”, and right-click to select “Exclude tag from search”.

I recommend to first inspect the list, to confirm it only contains fonts you want to ignore.

Then finally you could remove the Tag “KeepMe” from the Tag Manager.

7

Erwin, many thanks. That’s a clever way to achieve the needed results without too much hassle.

For ongoing work, is there a way to “take a look at” a variety of folders in MainType without adding them to the Library? Basically, the user wants to review a group of fonts from time to time without having to go through this ordeal.

8

No, as MainType is mainly a font manager, not a font viewer. The whole architecture is build around the idea to manage fonts.