Serif / Sans listed incorrectly

[crogonint]

Complete newb here, I just downloaded MainType earlier today to give it a try. I intend to watch some tutorials, the whole reason I want it is to sort fonts in to easily definable categories that I can use to quickly find what I need. Between The system and programs I've installed on my system (plus a few I handpicked for odd projects) It says I have 750 fonts installed. My FIRST goal is to uninstall a few hundred generic sans fonts and a few hundred generic serif fonts that I don't need. To do that, I'd like to create columns like license type, lower case a, e, upper case I and etc. to sort things quickly, and ditch all of the repetitive nonsense. I'd also love a column that showed me if the source was Windows or LibreOffice, or GIMP or some publishing suite or other. I'd also love a column to quickly sort all of the crap that doesn't even HAVE English fonts, or where English/Latin isn't the main font.

So question # 1) is.. how do I do that?

Then step 2 is to throw in all of the new fonts I WANT to use in future projects and sort them in to styles, like Germanic, handwriting, Eastern European.. Celtic.. etc. How do I do that? Keep in mind, I have the free version. I see lots of features and settings in here, but so far I keep being told that I don't have the pro version by the software, and I can't figure out how to do any of this.

Which brings me to the main point. Before I do THAT, I'm noticing that in the fonts that are already installed in my system, a sprinkling of the fonts are listed in the wrong serif / sans view. I can't seem to figure out how to edit the view or move the fonts using tags or anything.. so how DO I move those fonts that MainType has sorted in to the wrong category.. er, view.. by default? I don't want to start adding anything else in, or whittling anything else down until I'm sure that the currently listed stuff is sorted correctly.

Thanks for any help!

[Erwin Denissen]

You can make groups to categorize your fonts, but I also suggest you take a look at Tags. See the Quick Start Tutorial.

Custom views are also very useful, but that functionality is not available in the free edition.

The Serif/ Sans Serif information is stored in the fonts, and font designers do make mistakes or have a different opinion about what is Sans or Sans Serif. You can't change this data, unless you modify the font.

[crogonint]

You can't change this data, unless you modify the font.

Oh great, so now I have to modify the font? Doesn't High Logic offer some sort or font modifying thing? Can I use that to fix them? I haven't edited / created a font in around 30 years. Certainly things have changed since then.

Thanks for the info, though! You didn't touch on whether or not it's possible to add/modify columns to help me sort and get rid of all the random crap already installed on my system. (I'm beyond sick of scrolling through 750 fonts that I don't need / use.) Is that possible?

I don't mind whether I need to use views or groups or categories or whatever to categorize the fonts that I keep / new fonts, as a total newb, I'm not even sure what the difference is (views vs. groups vs. ??). If the free versions are capable of helping me sort the remaining fonts on my system, categorically, that's really all I need. The key is, I need to ditch the majority of the 750 odd fonts on my system that I have no use for. Intelligently, of course, I don't want to delete some repetitive fonts and bork the LibreOffice GUI, for example.

If MainType is capable of helping me do this, if you can point me to some resources to tell me how to do this, first things first, I would deeply appreciate it. ...or just explain it to me briefly, so I can figure it out from there.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't care who you are, Century Gothic has exactly zero serif's in it.

[crogonint]

The Serif/ Sans Serif information is stored in the fonts

So my internet searches to try to solve this my self led me back to this forum:
viewtopic.php?t=941

It says that there is a way to create a Panose column and some other things that I can't figure out how to do in the current version. In particular, it says that it comes with 4 different layouts that I can use, and then customize to get the Panose column. I can't figure out how to do that, though. Help?

[Erwin Denissen]

EDIT: Oh, and I don't care who you are, Century Gothic has exactly zero serif's in it.

Yes, that is horrible. I can't believe they put that false information in the font file. That font is made by Monotype, so blame them!


The Panose information is available through the Information panel.

Also note, there is a Classification column that is hidden initially, but can be shown when you right-click the header (any columns like Preview, Family and Style) above the font list.

[crogonint]

there is a Classification column

Yes, I found that one, but it's not terribly helpful. Perhaps if there was a bold column, and a few more for advanced categorization columns? I still haven't found the feature to enable the Panose column, so I guess it's gone now?? Would it be possible to get the Plugins feature back and use it to build out a way to add the extra columns that I am describing? ...or is there a simpler method for me to add the columns I need? I get the feeling that I'm missing something here. I don't see why having Panose as a sortable column used to be a feature, but now is not. I would like to add the columns I mentioned above in, so that I can sort things and get rid of close matches. 750 fonts on the system, considering that I've only manually added a couple of dozen, is just nuts. I have to do something with this mess.

I've gone through the video tutorials.. HOW do I get multiple fonts to show up in the information panel, to compare them? ...I figured it out. I was assuming that if I select 6 fonts, it would show 6 in the information panel. Not totally sure why I am forced to drag the fonts to a green plus sign. Incidentally, the first time I tried that, I got an "out of range" memory error (all 6 Arial fonts, including the Monotone Arial Black). Might want to check that for leaks that need plugging. CLUE: Once I click around and get a few fonts in there, the Green plus sign disappears, I'm left with a red minus sign on the last font in the information panel.

I found the Dark Mode, love it! One problem.. my screen has been color corrected for photography editing.. When I have dark mode on, the comparison colors in the information panel are a light pastel color which is very low contrast to the white text. How do I darken those shades a bit for the dark theme?

Thank you so much for your help! This program is pretty technical, which is awesome! I'm not sure how far I would get without a little help. Speaking of which, are there any more advanced tutorials out there? I think I've got a good base understanding, or “101” level of comprehension of the software, but I'm betting that there are a lot of 201 and 301 level features that I have no clue about.

EDIT: Ah! I nearly forgot to mention, after I changed the Century Gothic font OS/2 info to Sans.. I had two copies of the Century Gothic fonts listed, one set in the serif view, and one set in the sans view. The set in the serif view had white dots in the state column, and the set in the sans view had green dots. This was a bit puzzling. It didn't change after I clicked refresh, either. Is that by design? With some amount of trepidation, I deleted the fonts out of the serif view, and it seems to have worked out ok. However, the instructions in the popup that read that it was going to delete the fonts off of my entire system didn't do anything to reassure that I did the right thing. ...Did I?

EDIT2: From the user manual:
MainType provides immediate system-wide font synchronization, with no need to refresh font lists or reboot the computer after installing fonts.

Well, I must be doing SOMETHING wrong then!

[Erwin Denissen]

Yes, I found that one, but it's not terribly helpful. Perhaps if there was a bold column, and a few more for advanced categorization columns? I still haven't found the feature to enable the Panose column, so I guess it's gone now??

Yes, it is gone. It is too hard to sort by Panose, as it is actually not just a single value. Besides a lot of fonts have missing or incorrect Panose data.

I found the Dark Mode, love it! One problem.. my screen has been color corrected for photography editing.. When I have dark mode on, the comparison colors in the information panel are a light pastel color which is very low contrast to the white text. How do I darken those shades a bit for the dark theme?

Good point, we will ensure it will be improved with the next upcoming update.

Thank you so much for your help! This program is pretty technical, which is awesome! I'm not sure how far I would get without a little help. Speaking of which, are there any more advanced tutorials out there? I think I've got a good base understanding, or “101” level of comprehension of the software, but I'm betting that there are a lot of 201 and 301 level features that I have no clue about.

I am glad to know you like our font manager.

We have a manual and this support forum.

EDIT: Ah! I nearly forgot to mention, after I changed the Century Gothic font OS/2 info to Sans.. I had two copies of the Century Gothic fonts listed, one set in the serif view, and one set in the sans view. The set in the serif view had white dots in the state column, and the set in the sans view had green dots. This was a bit puzzling. It didn't change after I clicked refresh, either. Is that by design? With some amount of trepidation, I deleted the fonts out of the serif view, and it seems to have worked out ok. However, the instructions in the popup that read that it was going to delete the fonts off of my entire system didn't do anything to reassure that I did the right thing. ...Did I?

EDIT2: From the user manual:
MainType provides immediate system-wide font synchronization, with no need to refresh font lists or reboot the computer after installing fonts.

Well, I must be doing SOMETHING wrong then!

I don't think you did anything wrong. MainType did discover the updated font, but it will not automatically delete the original version. That is, as you did, something you need to do manually.

[crogonint]

It is too hard to sort by Panose, as it is actually not just a single value. Besides a lot of fonts have missing or incorrect Panose data.

Well now.. THAT is extremely disappointing. I don't suppose that there is a better method to finitiely sort out all of your fonts? I do NEED to sort them, not just list them in a massive log, like a spilled bottle of ketchup, running down the counter.

I think I mentioned earlier, there is no Bold column, as well as a few others that (in my humble opinion) would be necessary for sorting all of the fonts in to well defined groups.

Can you kindly tell me how to add the necessary columns, or at least, how to best sort them to put similar fonts next to each other. There doesn't seem to be a predefined method for doing this.. but perhaps I am missing something?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

There is a weight column. You can sort your fonts by weight: Thin, Extra Light, Light, Semi-light, Normal, Medium, Semi-bold, Bold, Extra-bold, Black.

[crogonint]

There is a weight column. You can sort your fonts by weight: Thin, Extra Light, Light, Semi-light, Normal, Medium, Semi-bold, Bold, Extra-bold, Black.

Yes, I am unsure of whether I should use weight or style or which columns to get a finite sorting of my fonts.

Additionally, I'm not getting the expected sort results. If I have the Regular column then the Classification column, and I sort the Classification column so that all of the Sans fonts are listed before the Serif fonts.. then I sort the Regular column; I would expect to have all of the Yes/Sans fonts listed before the Yes/Serif fonts. That is not happening. I require precise instructions on how to finitely sort my fonts so that I can eliminate ones that are fairly similar.

Is this the wrong software to be doing this?? It seems like this would be precisely the software that I need to accomplish this, but I've been on here for months asking for help and I don't seem to be getting anywhere fast. If there is a different product that you can recommend that I use to do this, please do so. I thought I had found the perfect solution when I started, but now I have my doubts.

EDIT: I guess it's only been a month. It certainly seems like longer. My mistake!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

You can only sort by one column at a time.

You would need to create groups for Sans and Serif fonts, then sort each group by weight.

[crogonint]

You can only sort by one column at a time.

Well that is a very serious deficit. Why is that?? It's very unusual, so I'm rather curious.

So If I group by Sans/Serif, then sorted by Weight, how could I then sort by type/style or etc? My goal would be to get script style fonts, and console fonts, and etc. all grouped together as well somehow.

Any help is very deeply appreciated! I really do need to get past this step so I can move on with other projects that will utilize the various types of fonts.

[Erwin Denissen]

You could tags all your fonts, provide multiple tags to each font (Serif, Slab, Rounded, Handwriting or whatever suits the font). It is a tedious task, but if you do it right, you can use the Tag Search panel and make the selection of tags you want. Additionally you can create a custom views based on those tags, so you can get the result back in a single click.

[crogonint]

You could tags all your fonts, provide multiple tags to each font

Indeed.. I've read up extensively. Most people recommend that exact process to sort and group your fonts effectively. I agree. Most people also say that MainType is the software to use to do it, So you folks do have a reason to be proud!

However, I don't really want to spend time tagging 800 some fonts that I'm trying to thin out and get rid of. I want to (my PLAN was to) quickly sort the fonts that are already on the system, and get rid of the ones that are near duplicates or not needed. Certainly there must be dozens, if not hundreds, with that many fonts installed. Anyway, the tool to do that doesn't seem to exist. I think Maintype might have been up to the task when it had Panose sorting. It might be able to do it if the columns were sortable in mass. Right now though..? I'm not really sure how to proceed.

Could I get a link to an older (full?) version of MainType that would allow me to use the Panose sorting? As I mentioned previously, I haven't worked with Panose and creating fonts for about 35 years, so I'm just not sure where to turn.