The repository locations are stored in the Roots File, artbase.roo, which is a binary file consisting of a list of the available MetaEdit+ repositories and their paths. A repository must be listed here for you to be able to log in to it. Initially there is only one repository, ‘demo’, supplied with MetaEdit+. Note that you may have other backup or checkpoint repositories to maintain a history of the evolution of your repository, or even different repositories. Initially it is best not to have several different repositories in use, as it is not possible to share data in a real-time manner between repositories: an important feature of MetaEdit+. Instead, create several projects within the same repository.

The path for each repository should point to the directory where that repository’s info file, manager.ab, is. With the single user version, the paths to the repositories should generally be relative paths from the MetaEdit+ startup directory. In the multi-user version, the paths to the repositories are generally fully qualified, e.g. UNC paths or mounted drives or directories.

To set the path where the client can find the artbase.roo file, open the Options Tool by pressing the Options button in the Startup Launcher and go to the Paths page (as shown in Figure 2). Enter the path of the directory containing the artbase.roo file into the text field labeled Roots File Dir, and choose Accept from the pop-up menu to accept the value. You can press Save as Defaults to make the change permanent by saving it in your metaedit.ini file.

In the multi-user version, you should also set the host and port for the Server URL, to match the host running the server and the port given (or the default of 6370 if not) when starting the server process (see Sections 3.1 and 3.3).