Jasons General Requests/Enhancements

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Jason
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:11 pm

Jasons General Requests/Enhancements

Post by Jason »

These are a few things I would love to see in the next release of MainType. I realise that they are not simple additions, but would love to see them in this great program (I've demoed everything else thats available for windows, but MainType was the one worth choosing IMHO)

(I'll add to this list at later dates as I think of something)

1. "Lock Fonts" (for the active tab)
when I have all the active fonts as I like (required OS core & program fonts + some others for web browsing), I can right click on them and lock them to prevent me trying to uninstall/unload them.


2-i. "Create Pseudo Group" (name)
there already is the ability to add a font as a shortcut to a chosen group. but a new addition of "create pseudo group" button at the top, and different icons to tell me its a "pseudo" or shortcut group (without having to go inside the group and check to see if the font icon has a shortcut arrow or not. these groups could be red/grey folders with the shortcut arrow to remind us its not a real font location.

maybe splitting the group pane vertically, having normal (real) groups on the left and pseudo groups on the right. so we can add as many variations to themes and work projects as we want and easily tell them apart!

it would be nice to right-click a font > "add to pseudo group" and a list of current/past projects appear, select the one i want/create a new one and I'm done!....and its just a few clicks away.


2-ii. Pseudo Group history stack
a window/pane where I can add extra info about the fonts used for a particular job. ie: use "&" from X font and use numbers from X font, etc. MainType records this info and saves it into your more secure fonts location (away from the OS partition)....maybe a "save info/package to project location" so I can store it with the project (either just a text based file or text file + used project fonts for safe keeping....ie: if i need to go to a client with the laptop, and CD/DVD archiving, etc)


3. GUI brightness slider
sometimes, my vision gets so washed out with the bright GUI, it takes me a few minutes to readjust to my design program again. I personally don't like the aluminium theme (looks very dated)


4. some sort of a "compare font" system
I think this was mentioned....I haven't checked through all of the posts here TBH


5. Quick access toolbar buttons for layouts


6. dynamic "white space" around characters in "character" view
at the moment the white border box grows way too big IMHO when changed to extra/ultra large


7. right-click a font > "Open Font Location"


that's it for now
Last edited by Jason on Thu Mar 12, 2009 9:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Jason
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:11 pm

Re: General Requests/Enhancements

Post by Jason »

8. Adding font families as a group
Right-click on font 'family' folder in "Browse" gives you options to add that Family to a group. ie: the "Helvetica" ("family" folder) could be added to the group "Sans Serif". Quick and simple.

At the moment, I have to go into the actual font folder itself, select all of the fonts in that family/folder, create a new group called "Helvetica" under Sans Serif and add these fonts to it as a 'shortcut'.


9. <Font not accessible>
Right clicking on the font itself or family group folder could give "Fix Broken Links" or something similar. (maybe a popup for you to relocate it yourself?). I've been spring cleaning my font folders only to find hundreds of font families having <Font not accessible> instead of the font itself. Maybe there could be a smart-Link warning at startup that warns the user that fonts X, Y and Z have been removed/relocated outside of maintype. then the ability to auto search/Re-Point to the correct location could be a nice feature.


10. Auto-Load fonts for Design programs when a required font is not loaded/installed.
Jason
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:11 pm

Re: Jasons General Requests/Enhancements

Post by Jason »

11. Delete old font versions
This is something that I've spent quite some time in sorting out manually. It would be nice to see this feature added to the context menu when right-clicking on a font folder in "Browse". or for MainType to auto detect multiple versions and give a user interaction popup (delete / move to folder "fontname [version]" / Ignore for now)

Re: Link


12: add "Include Sub folders" icon to the 'Groups' tab
fast way for organizing fonts via panose/weight, etc. It works great on the Browse tab, but is more valuable to me on the group tab.


13: Warn about Restricted or Demo fonts
Maybe the preview text could be in Red for these kind of fonts?
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