Specifications

Appendix C:
Font Support in Mac OS X
Mac OS X supports tens of thousands of fonts in many different formats. These
formats are listed below.
Mac PostScript Type 1 Adobe PostScript fonts launched desktop publish-
ing and are used today by publishers, corporations,
and government agencies for high-quality output
to laser printers, imagesetters, and platesetters.
Each PostScript font requires two files. One, called
the screen font, contains the display information;
the other, called the printer font, contains the
PostScript outline, which can be rendered to the
screen and to an output device.
Multiple Master This special PostScript font allows variation of one
or more font parameters (such as weight) to create
a large number of custom styles, also known as
instances. Mac OS X v10.3 can activate already-
created instances of this font.
Mac TrueType Most current RIPs support Mac TrueType fonts,
which are typically used in home and office
environments. A single file contains both screen
and printer font information. Be sure to embed
these fonts when making PDFs or PostScript files
to avoid problems at the RIP.
System (dfonts) Introduced in Mac OS X, dfonts are specially
packaged TrueType fonts that contain information
in the data fork instead of in a separate resource
fork. Many dfonts are high-quality fonts with exten-
sive glyph sets that designers will love. (Note that
applications must support Unicode and be revised
to take advantage of these glyph sets.) Some of
these names conflict with existing PostScript or
TrueType fonts, so you might want to remove them
when you prepare your system (see page 21).
OpenType OpenType fonts (extension .otf) can contain 65,000
different glyphs, so type can be set in non-Roman
languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
Some applications, such as TextEdit, Adobe
InDesign, and Photoshop, support advanced
OpenType layout Unicode; other applications get
only the basic MacRoman character set from
OpenType fonts, and would have to be revised
to take advantage of Unicode and advanced
OpenType typography.
Windows TrueType Same as Mac TrueType, but with a different internal
format. The extension is .ttf.
31
Technology Tour
Advanced Typography
with Mac OS X