Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard & fonts

This page tries to provide you with a comprehensive overview of the way fonts are handled by Mac OS X 10.5. It covers the following topics:

  • What is new in Leopard when it comes to fonts
  • Font types that are supported by OS X
  • Fonts that are included in OS X 10.5
  • Locations where fonts can be stored
  • Font search order
  • Fonts that should never be deleted in Leopard
  • Other sources of information

Before diving into OS X 10.5 specific font information, here is a quick recap of the strong points of OS X in general when it comes to font handling:

  • The operating system can load an unlimited number of fonts. The main limitations are the patience of the user while scrolling through an endless list of fonts or while waiting for the system to have digested that information itself.
  • No additional tool such as Adobe Type Manager is needed to visualize fonts. OS X has its own versatile font renderer.
  • Fonts are managed on three levels: system, network and user.
  • Nested font folders are supported, making it easier to classify fonts.

What is new in Leopard when it comes to fonts?

Mac OS X 10.5 includes a number of font related improvements. The most interesting ones for prepress users include:

  • You can print out comprehensive previews of your fonts in Font Book.
  • Using Quick Look you can easily preview fonts from the Finder.
  • System font protection is a mechanism that makes it impossible to delete essential system fonts. Leopard will warn you when you’re about to perform an action that will remove a required font. In a prepress environment this can be a hassle as people routinely replace frequently used fonts such as Helvetica by their own or a customers version. You can find a (somewhat tricky) work-around in this thread on forums.b4print.com. Another related interesting read is this one.
  • There are additional fonts included: Arial Unicode, Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma, Papyrus Condensed & Wingdings. The main advantage of having these fonts is that they get used a lot in Microsoft Office documents. Cross platform compatibility just got a little easier.
  • Font Auto-Activation automatically activates fonts as you need them. When an application requests an installed font that’s currently disabled, Leopard activates that font and keeps it active until the requesting application quits.
  • The OS-level text layout and typography system got a major overhaul, resulting in better typography for applications that rely on the OS for this. The support for some advanced OpenType features such as contextual alternates or mark attachment has also been improved.

Font types that are supported by OS X

Fonts that are included in OS X 10.5

A full list of all fonts that ship with Leopard can be found in this article on the Apple support site.

Locations where fonts can be stored

  • Users>user name>Library>Fonts - This is the best place to store your personal font collection
  • Library>Fonts - the system’s main font collection, meant for fonts that should be accessible to any user of the system
  • Network>Library>Fonts - the font collection shared across the network
  • System>Library>Fonts - the core set of system fonts
  • If you are using a font management tool, fonts can be stored at other locations as well.

Font search order

When a certain font is needed, the computer will search for that font in a certain order:

  1. Some applications such as Adobe InDesign have their own font management routines and their own font folder. When such an application needs a font, it will always first search its own font folder.
  2. Users>user name>Library>Fonts
  3. Library>Fonts
  4. Network>Library>Fonts
  5. System>Library>Fonts

There are web pages that mention a different access order. The above list is taken from the Apple ‘Advanced typography‘ document.

Fonts that should never be deleted in Leopard

  • AppleGothic.ttf
  • AquaKanaBold.otf
  • AquaKanaRegular.otf
  • Courier.dfont*
  • Geneva.dfont
  • Helvetica LT MM & HelveLTMM
  • Helvetica.dfont*
  • HelveticaNeue.dfont*
  • Keyboard.dfont
  • LastResort.dfont
  • LucidaGrande.dfont
  • Monaco.dfont
  • Osaka.dfont
  • OsakaMono.dfont
  • Symbol.dfont*
  • Times LT MM & TimesLTMM
  • Times.dfont*
  • ZapfDingbats.dfont*
  • HiraMinProN-W3, HiraMinProN-W6, HiraKakuProN-W3 & HiraKakuProN-W6

The fonts marked with an asterisk can be replaced by other versions of the same font. This means you can use a PostScript version of Helvetica instead of the .dfont version.

Other sources of information

The Take control book about Leopard font management can be an interesting read.

12 Comments to “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard & fonts”

  1. Annie Baker, on January 13th, 2008 at 10:06 am Said:

    Are school fonts supported in Leopard?

  2. Laurens, on January 14th, 2008 at 4:14 am Said:

    For more information on previewing fonts, check out http://www.macworld.com/article/131466/2008/01/105previewfonts.html

  3. Laurens, on January 14th, 2008 at 4:22 am Said:

    Regarding school fonts: I assume you mean the fonts that look as if they are handwritten italic script fonts, they way we all learn to write at school? The fonts supplied by http://www.schoolfonts.com are OpenType fonts, so they should work fine with Leopard. Since OS X supports all modern font formats, I wouldn’t expect problems with other libraries either.

  4. nev, on February 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am Said:

    I’m a bit confused as to how the ‘font activation’ thing works. Can I dump a LOT of fonts somewhere, from where they will be activated by, say, Illustrator when it requires one of them, without this overloading the system? Or is it advisable to use some font activator/management software?

  5. Brady, on February 21st, 2008 at 10:19 pm Said:

    My fonts will not remain active for some reason, within my suitcase. I have them set to permanent, and the still go inactive when I shut down and start back up. Anyone experiencing this?

  6. John Galt, on February 26th, 2008 at 1:27 am Said:

    Where is your information coming from?

    1) The file extension “.ott” that you list for AquaKanaBold and AquaKanaRegular is attributed to an OpenOffice template file format, not a font. Did you mean .otF?
    http://www.fileinfo.net/extension/ott

    2) The AppleGothic.dfont that you refer to in your above list of fonts that should never be deleted in Leopard is NOT referenced in this official Apple document, “Mac OS X 10.5: Fonts list.”
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307069

    There is an AppleGothic.ttf (TrueType Font) but no dfont. There is also an Apple LiGothic Medium.dfont.

  7. Judy, on March 7th, 2008 at 7:17 am Said:

    Fonts on MacBook using Leopard are not displayed in Font name. They were on old system. What can I do to see them in their actual display?

  8. Andrea, on March 7th, 2008 at 10:46 am Said:

    Can anyone help me? I’m a simple user and when I go to Pages to write a new document, all the fonts listed on the font list do not appear in the actual font they are, so it’s time consuming to have to keep viewing each one. Is there a setting where they can be permanently viewed in the font as connected to its title? My previous Macs had this feature and I like just seeing the font samples as I’m searching for the right one.

  9. Hugo, on March 29th, 2008 at 1:00 am Said:

    I wonder if anyone has seen this? We’ve had OS X Server 10.4 running for years, using it to share fonts via network/library/fonts. We are in the midst of upgrading the workstations to 10.5. Most of them have gone fine. But on one machine, Font Book shows no Network in the Colections area. But, if we go, via the Finder, to /Network/Library/ we do see the Network font folder -

    Any suggestions would be great,
    Thanks,

  10. Laurens, on April 2nd, 2008 at 5:39 am Said:

    I updated the above page with John Galt’s excellent feedback. Regarding the other questions: they don’t ring a bell so I cannot help you with them. This site is not really suited for this type of questions but if you would post support issues on the b4print font forum at http://www.b4print.com/forums/index.php?board=30.0 then I am sure the prepress gurus there will try to help you out.

  11. Danimal, on April 12th, 2008 at 1:28 pm Said:

    Is the function of changing the actual display font used with/under desktop/ window icons completely gone? (OS X 10.5)

    Changing the font size is easy enough, but I cannot find anything about changing the actual font.

    The main problem I have is my Dashboard application uses a white outline-based font that is almost impossible to read. I cannot find anything about how to alter the default font to something more readable.

  12. Laurens, on April 14th, 2008 at 4:01 am Said:

    http://opentype.info/blog/2008/01/31/myths-about-helvetica-and-mac-os-x-105-leopard/ is an interesting read.

    The default font in the OS X Finder is Lucida Grande. Your best bet to change it, as far as I know, is to wait until Silk ( http://unsanity.com/haxies/silk ) gets updated to support OS X 10.5.

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