Sync favorite fonts between programs and copy from beta

[Nathan Shirley]

While using Publisher in beta, I had set quite a few fonts as favorites, which didn't carry over in the release version. I assume there's a file somewhere I can copy from the beta to the release to get these favorites moved over, anyone know where that might be (Windows). Also, is there a feature to sync these favorited fonts between Publisher, Photo, and Designer?

[Nathan Shirley]

So I found the fonts file in appdata\roaming... and in editing the file was able to copy my favorite fonts from beta to the release version. While I was at it I edited the fonts files for Photo and Designer too so they'd all match. I got an error message when loading Publisher and Photo, and the favorite fonts didn't show up in the program itself. However Designer loaded up fine and all the favorited fonts were there.

It would be great to have favorited fonts sync up between programs.

[Nathan Shirley]

Ah I figured it out. I had never made any favorite fonts in Photo or in the release version of Publisher, only in Designer and Publisher beta. So it didn't like me adding an entry for favorites in the text file when it hadn't generated that entry itself. So I added one favorite in Photo and one in Publisher, then edited their fonts files with all my favorited fonts and they both accepted them.

Still, as I wrote before, it would be great to have these synced between programs.

[walt.farrell]

Serif have commented elsewhere that it would be nice to have that capability, but they haven't found a good/safe way to do it. 

You could buy some of the applications from Serif and some from either Apple or Microsoft. That makes it hard to predict where the various configuration files are saved, and sandboxing may make it difficult or impossible for one application to update another application's files.

But be sure to post a feature request, or post in an existing feature request topic.

[Prof Dods]

Could you explain how you managed to copy the list of favourite fonts between affinity programs please

[Nathan Shirley]

I wish I remembered exactly... it wasn't easy.

Okay I found the file again. I'm in Windows, so if you're on a Mac it will be in a somewhat different location. But in windows go to:

Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher (or Designer or Photo)\1.0(or whatever version)\Settings\Fonts.xml

So the 'Fonts.xml' file contains the favorited fonts for the specific program's folder you're in. Open it in NotePad, or something you can edit it in. Now look carefully for a line saying, "<FavouriteFamilyNames>" followed by a list of your favorited fonts. It then ends with "</FavouriteFamilyNames>" again. Copy all of this text.

Next open the same 'Fonts.xml' file in the Designer, or photo, or whatever Affinity program folder you want to copy your favorites to. Carefully highlight the favorited fonts you want to overwrite, and paste in your previously copied text. Next time you open Designer, or whatever, you should see your favorited fonts from Publisher, or whatever program you copied them from. Good luck.

[walt.farrell]

You could simply copy the entire file, rather than editing it. That would be simpler, and the only downside is that it would also copy the "recently used fonts" information across.

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, Nathan Shirley said:

I'm in Windows, so if you're on a Mac it will be in a somewhat different location.

From what I can tell, there are no *.xml files in the per user Affinity files on Macs. Instead, this info is stored in *.dat files, wih a similar (& not easily parsed) data structure to the *.propcol files. 

[Nathan Shirley]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You could simply copy the entire file, rather than editing it. That would be simpler, and the only downside is that it would also copy the "recently used fonts" information across.

I was afraid to try that, good to know it would be that easy. I thought I remember seeing other differences, but perhaps not.

Yeah, no idea with Mac unfortunately.

[Chillr2021]

On 10/11/2019 at 11:52 AM, walt.farrell said:

You could simply copy the entire file, rather than editing it. That would be simpler, and the only downside is that it would also copy the "recently used fonts" information across.

Thanks Walt and Nathan too for this, saved me two hours typing my favourite fonts from Photo to Designer.

[thomaso]

On 10/11/2019 at 4:18 AM, Nathan Shirley said:

Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher (or Designer or Photo)\1.0(or whatever version)\Settings\Fonts.xml

So the 'Fonts.xml' file contains the favorited fonts for the specific program's folder you're in. Open it in NotePad,

On 10/11/2019 at 5:12 PM, R C-R said:

From what I can tell, there are no *.xml files in the per user Affinity files on Macs. Instead, this info is stored in *.dat files, wih a similar (& not easily parsed) data structure to the *.propcol files. 

Any idea why Serif might have decided to develop it for mac this way? Aside the difference between mac and Windows – what advantage does it cause for the app to create user preference files in a format which is unreadable for users? In particular since Serif well experienced the advantage of XML readability when developing APub's .IDML import?

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Any idea why Serif might have decided to develop it for mac this way?

Nope.