Font Forum

I bought MainType last year for my big folder of 100,000+ font files, and I love its interface and functionality a lot, but have never gotten the hang of its intended install steps. Coincidentally, I've had to do some surgery on the laptop where it runs (including a couple of Windows reinstalls), so I'm installing it 'from scratch' for the third time and figure I'll reach out for advice.

Because my previous workspace was built around FontExplorer X, my existing font folders are organized by letter, compiled into about 35 directories - A, B, C . . . 0, 1, 2, . . . and a few auxiliary folders for stuff I've bought or downloaded this year. These subdirectories are all grouped together in a folder at the root of the C: drive. The whole shebang is 4.85 GB across 64,808 files.

When I first tried to throw the whole directory into MainType, it was too much; the process choked and was hung until a reboot. What's currently working okay is going into the Groups panel to add a font folder and selecting the subdirectory - but I'm ending up with groups called A, B, C . . . which isn't really desirable - and when I delete the group, I believe I lose access to the faces inside it.

Long story short: looking for advice / tips for doing a clean install with a large library that will just work.

100,000 fonts would take a few hours to process I think. Did you wait long enough for it to complete?

I would rename the font folders in Windows Explorer before letting MainType generate groups automatically from the folders. Adding one folder at a time would avoid waiting long for the task to finish.

Alternatively, you could simply rename the groups after generating them. Deleting a group does not remove fonts from MainType's database. You can still find them from the Quick Search field, and then drag them to any group.