Further complications came with the introduction of the Multiple Master fonts in the 1990's. More recently fonts have begun migrating to the OpenType format.

To make things even harder OS X can handle different languages. If you hear someone mention a Unicode font they are referring to basically a character numbering scheme that assigns a unique number to every character that can be produced in the world. What makes Unicode a challenge is that it's supported on the application level so some applications support it (InDesign) and some don't (Quark).

Font Types Supported in OS X:
Same Old Formats:
Postscript Type 1 (you no longer need ATM in OS X)
Multiple Master (limited support in OS X)
Mac True Type

New Formats:
Windows True Type
OpenType (From Adobe and Microsoft)
Mac OS X dFont (specific for Mac OS X

Open Type - developed in 1996, Apple was very late to adopt. A single file contains either TrueType or Postscript code, it cannot contain both. The Entire Adobe Library is now in Open Type. Other vendors are following suit and this seems to be the predominant font that will prevail. This format supports Unicode formatting. There are lots of very exotic glyphs available if your using a Unicode aware application (Quark is NOT unicode aware).

dFonts - DataFork ONLY TrueType font. Try to stay away from these if possible. These fonts will not work with OS 9 and are not compatible with Windows. You do NOT want to supply these with files you might send out unless your positive the provider is using OS X. Identified by a .dFont suffix. They are OK if used in a PDF AS LONG as they are embedded. There is nothing wrong with these fonts from a quality stand point, but you better be absolutely certain about who you might be sending them to.

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