A brief history of fonts in Mac OS
a year ago
- #typography
- #MacOS
- #font-technology
- Early Macs used bitmap fonts stored in FONT resources, later transitioning to NFNT bitmap fonts in 1984.
- Apple rounded the typography standard from 72.27 points per inch to 72 for the Mac.
- Adobe's PostScript Type 1 fonts led Apple to develop TrueType as a rival outline font format.
- TrueType was revolutionary, allowing font internals to be opened up, unlike Adobe's controlled PostScript fonts.
- Microsoft licensed TrueType from Apple, while Adobe opened its Type 1 font format for free use.
- Apple introduced TrueType GX in 1994, which later influenced Microsoft's TrueType Open and OpenType.
- Mac OS X in 2001 moved fonts away from resource forks to data-fork format with .dfont extension.
- Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) improved font support, especially for Latin, Arabic, and Asian scripts.
- Major foundries like Linotype developed font management software such as FontExplorer X.
- FontLab and Fontographer were key font design apps for Mac OS, with Fontographer eventually being abandoned.