Places where fonts can reside AND the order in which fonts are located and used:
1) Application private font folder
2) Users/YourName/Library/Fonts (your home font directory
3) /Library/Fonts (System-wide shared fonts)
4) /Network/Library/Fonts (For OS X server ONLY)
5) /System/Library/Fonts (Core System Fonts)
6) /System Folder:Fonts (Classic System Folder)

It is in this order that the system will look for fonts. It will use the font in the first folder that it finds it. The Classic Font folder does not do a great job handling OpenType Fonts. If you need fonts to be seen by a Classic Application then you have to put the fonts in /System Folder:Fonts directory, but do NOT put OpenType Fonts there.

Default Installed Core System fonts with OS X:

Note the color scheme used here. Red is signifying fonts to be careful of, while green means that those fonts are reserved for the system and MUST remain. Moving these will stop your machine from booting (trust me on this one!!! DOH!).

Of course if your using Classic then the standard classic City fonts must also remain active in your System Folder/Fonts foder:
Charcoal
Chicago
Geneva
Monaco
New York

The fonts coded Red CAN be moved out of the System/Library/Fonts folder with one exception... Helvetica. This is a major problem in OS X, but some applications were built around the Helvetica font. Some of these applications include Address Book, Garage Band, iChat, iCal, iPhoto, etc. Removing this font and not having an alternate Helvetica loaded could cause your system to give you the beachball from hell.

There is no easy way around this. You can disable Helvetica, but you must always have an alternate one loaded so Helvetica is the ONLY font I would recommend not handling through our type utilities such as Master Juggler and Suitcase.

Lastly, in your Library/Fonts folder is a long list of fonts all of which can be removed. The only fonts to consider keeping here are Verdana and Arial for display of web pages. These are the two default website fonts.

Prior to Panther it was very difficult to move fonts from the Core System folder. Since Panther deleting them is far easier, you can simply highlite the fonts and bring them to the trash. A pop-up will come up requesting the administrator password. Make sure to backup the fonts prior to deleting them just in case.

Don't forget Adobe!!
Just to further muddy the waters Adobe also has special places that it stores fonts. So if you have some fonts active in Adobe applications and don't know where they're coming from check in these places:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/Reqrd/Base>br> /Library/Application Support/Adobe/PDFL/6.0/Fonts
/Applications/Adobe InDesign/Fonts (any Multiple MAsters for InDesign muyst live in this folder to work!)

None of these folder are required to have fonts. You can move the fonts out of the folders but keep a copy. If the application complains then move the font(s) back in and report it to me. I've yet to have a problem, but don't use the applications to the extent the production folks do.

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