Best way to share fonts/groups in MainType 4

[tevert]

We recently upgraded to MaintType 4 in our small publishing office. In previous versions, we sync'd our fonts library folder and groups (shortcuts) folders between workstations so that we all had the same groups and the same fonts. If someone added a font to a group, we just sync'd the folders and bingo, everyone had it. Same was true if someone designed a new font and added it to their fonts folder.

What's the best way to do this with MainType 4?

Thanks!

Tony

[Erwin Denissen]

With MainType 4 there is no easy way to keep folders in sync, as MainType 4 is not a file based font manager. Besides it currently doesn't support network drives. The current version of MainType 4 has no server edition. We have plans for such edition, that allows to share font collections, and includes font license management.

You can use the backup-and-restore feature to get a copy of the library from another person within your organization, and then use that as your library, but this is not something you want to do too often, as it is a manual process...

Probably better is to perform a font folder refresh. It will detect new and modified fonts, so those fonts will be added to your library. They won't be automatically added to existing groups, but you can click the Recently Added views to see the last 50, or click the Library view and sort by Added Date (this column is hidden by default, but can easily be shown by right-clicking the columns header).

Maybe you or other readers of this forum post can come up with a better idea.

[tevert]

Any change / improvement in this yet? We've uninstalled the v4 we purchased multiple licenses for, and are (rather unhappily) back on v2 at the moment due to this problem.

Thanks,

Tony

[bggs]

I would just like to add my voice to this request. We have several people in our department who would benefit from sharing this font organisation. I suppose though you would need to sort out the licensing issues first (and not all fonts on one computer will necessarily be installed/ licensed on the other etc).

Anyway, I am only trialling Maintype at the moment - look forward to an update on this.

[Erwin Denissen]

Any change / improvement in this yet? We've uninstalled the v4 we purchased multiple licenses for, and are (rather unhappily) back on v2 at the moment due to this problem.

We will soon release a new version that will support fonts located on network drives, but that doesn't solve the issue related to sharing fonts and font groups.

[CMMConcepts]

I just upgraded to MainType 5 and discovered this issue. I did the same thing with an earlier version: mapped the Groups to a shared network folder so that any font added on my desktop was also added to my laptop and vice versa. If the prediction in the last post was correct, and this functionality wasn't restored in MainType 5, I will also be going back to an earlier version, and will be requesting a full refund. The (shared) groups were the most valuable part of the application for me.

[Erwin Denissen]

Unfortunately that specific feature is no longer possible as we moved from a file based solution to a database driven approach. That has more benefits, but in your case it also has some drawbacks.

[CMMConcepts]

Thank you very much for your reply. Excellent customer service, which, IMO, adds even more value to an already great product.

MainType 5 definitely has some great features, and it's by far my favorite font organization application, so I'm happy to financially support its development. I just bounce between two computers constantly, so having to manually maintain something like this, which is a daily (hourly) used utility, is very confusing and time consuming.

I'm quite PC savvy... is there any specific file I can sync between machines that will handle DB queries in such a way that my inline groups still match up? I read about the master config file that can be used to back up and move installations, but that seemed like overkill for what I am trying to accomplish here.

The other reason this is disappointing to me is because the old way of physically coping fonts to shared Group folder allowed me to just copy that folder to USB when I traveled and all currently needed fonts were on the road with me. I absolutely appreciate the benefits that the database driven approach brings, but losing the ability to easily grab the 200 fonts files out of my 43K+ that I need to have with me on the road is a big loss. I'm forced to manually maintain font folders outside of the system, anyway, which is what defeats so much of the purpose of using it.

Thank you, again.

[CMMConcepts]

I'm still trying to decide whether to keep 5 or go back to 2.

Does anyone have any experience with doing the things I described above? Any suggestion, even more complex, for being able to keep Group folders synced on two machines?

Thank you.

[Erwin Denissen]

I don't think sharing groups the way you want it is possible, but you can always export fonts from a MainType group to a network drive or to a USB stick.

[CMMConcepts]

Thank you.