Fonts on the Mac
Encyclopedia
This article describes current and historical practices regarding the Apple Macintosh
’s approach to typeface
s, including font management and fonts
included with each system revision.
The primary system font in Mac OS X
(all versions) is Lucida Grande
. For labels and other small text, 10 pt Lucida Grande is typically used. Lucida Grande is almost identical in appearance to the prevalent Windows font Lucida Sans, but contains a much richer variety of glyph
s.
Mac OS X ships with a number of typefaces, for a number of different scripts, licensed from several sources. Mac OS X includes Roman
, Japanese
and Chinese
fonts. It also supports sophisticated font techniques, such as ligatures and filtering.
Many of the classic Mac typefaces included with previous versions are still part of Mac OS X, including the serif typefaces New York, Palatino, and Times, the sans-serif Charcoal and Chicago, Monaco, Geneva and Helvetica. Courier, a monospaced font, also remained.
In the initial publicly released version of Mac OS X (March 2001), font support for scripts was limited to what was provided by Lucida Grande and a few fonts for the major Japanese scripts. With each major revision of the OS, fonts supporting additional scripts have been added.
Zapfino
is a calligraphic typeface designed by and named after renowned typeface designer Hermann Zapf
for Linotype. Zapfino utilizes advanced typographic features of the AAT "morx" table format, and is included in OS X partially as a technology demo. Ligatures and character variations are extensively used. The font is based on a calligraphic example by Zapf in 1944. The version included with Mac OS X is a single weight. Since then, Linotype has introduced “Linotype Zapfino Extra” which includes the additional “Forte” weight and even more options and alternates.
Several of the GX fonts that Apple commissioned and originally shipped with System 7.5 were ported to use Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) instead (see below) and shipped with Mac OS X 10.2 and v10.3
. Hoefler Text
, Apple Chancery and Skia are examples of fonts of this line of heritage. Other typefaces were licensed from the general offerings of leading font vendors.
The LastResort font is a font that is invisible to the end user, but is used by the system to display reference glyph
s in the event that real glyphs needed to display a given character are not found in any other available font. The symbols provided by the LastResort font place glyphs into categories based on their location in the Unicode
system and provide a hint to the user about which font or script is required to view unavailable characters. Designed by Apple and extended by Michael Everson
of Evertype for Unicode 4.1 coverage, the symbols adhere to a unified design. The glyphs are square with rounded corners with a bold outline. In the left and right sides of the outline, the Unicode
range that the character belongs to is given using hexadecimal
digits. Top and bottom are used for one or two descriptions of the Unicode block
name. A symbol representative of the block is centered inside the square. The typeface used for the text cutouts in the outline is Chicago, otherwise not included with Mac OS X. The LastResort font has been part of Mac OS since version 8.5, but the limited success of Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging
(ATSUI) on the classic Mac OS means that only users of Mac OS X are regularly exposed to it.
Of the fonts that ship with Mac OS X, Lucida Grande has the broadest repertoire. This font provides a relatively complete set of Arabic
, Roman
, Cyrillic
, Hebrew
, Thai
and Greek
letters and an assortment of common symbols. All in all, it contains a bit more than 2800 glyphs (including ligatures).
In Mac OS X v10.3 ("Panther"), a font called Apple Symbols
was introduced. It complements the set of symbols from Lucida Grande, but also contains a number of glyphs only accessible by glyph ID (that is, they have not been assigned Unicode codepoints). A hidden font called .Keyboard contains 92 visible glyphs, most of which appear on Apple keyboards.
system software supported only bitmapped fonts. The original font set was custom designed for the Macintosh and were intended to provide a highly legible screen display. These system fonts were named after large cities, e.g. New York, Chicago, and Geneva.
Bitmapped fonts were stored as resources within the System file. A utility called Font/DA Mover was used to install fonts into or extract fonts out of the System file. Fonts could also be embedded into Macintosh applications and other file types, such as a HyperCard
stack. Fonts that were not being used were stored in a suitcase file.
The ImageWriter
printer supported a higher resolution mode where bitmap fonts double the size of the screen resolution were automatically substituted for 'near letter quality' printing. (For example, a 24-point bitmapped font would be used for 12-point printing.) This feature was sometimes called two-times font printing. Some later Apple QuickDraw-based laser printers also supported four-times font printing where bitmaps quadruple the screen size were used for letter quality output.
With the introduction of the LaserWriter
and support for PostScript
-compatible printers, the Mac system software initially supported outline fonts for printing only. These outline fonts could be printed in letter quality at any size. PostScript fonts came with two files; a bitmap font was installed into the System file, and an outline font file was stored in the System Folder. Some of the bitmapped 'city' fonts would be automatically substituted for PostScript fonts by the printer driver. Commercial typefaces such as Times and Helvetica began to be distributed by Apple, Adobe Systems
, and others.
The widely-used Adobe Type Manager
(ATM) system extension allowed PostScript outline fonts to be both displayed on screen and used with non-PostScript printers. This allowed for true WYSIWYG
printing in a much broader set of circumstances than the base system software, however with a noticeable speed penalty, especially on Motorola 68000
-based machines.
Apple later added support for TrueType
outline fonts through a freely available system extension, providing similar functionality as ATM. Apple also provided TrueType outline files for the bitmapped 'city' system fonts, allowing letter quality WYSIWYG printing of those fonts.
A reboot was required after installing new fonts unless using a font management utility such as Suitcase, FontJuggler, or MasterJuggler.
was integrated TrueType outline font support, which also received industry support from Microsoft
. Fonts were still stored in the System file but could now be installed using drag-and-drop
. To install new fonts, one had to quit all running applications.
Despite this, Adobe Type Manager and PostScript Type 1 fonts continued to be widely used, especially for professional desktop publishing. Eventually Adobe released a free version of their utility, called ATM Light.
In System 7.1, a separate Fonts folder appeared in the System Folder. Fonts were automatically installed when dropped on the System Folder, and became available to applications after they were restarted. Font resources were generally grouped together in suitcase files. However, rules for storing printer fonts varied greatly between different system, printer and application configurations until the advent of the new Fonts folder. Typically, they had to be stored directly in the System Folder or in the Extensions Folder.
System 7.5 added the QuickDraw GX
graphics engine. TrueType GX supported ligatures and other advanced typography features. However very little software supported these features, and PostScript remained the standard for desktop publishing software.
Starting with Mac OS 8.5, the operating system supported data fork fonts, including Windows
TrueType and OpenType
. In addition, Apple created a new format, called data-fork suitcases. At the same time, support was added for TrueType collection files, conventionally with the filename extension
'.ttc'.
System versions 7 to 9 supported a maximum of 128 font suitcases and each suitcase could store multiple fonts.
Starting with version 7.1, Apple unified the implementation of non-roman script systems in a programming interface called WorldScript
. WorldScript I was used for all one-byte character sets and WorldScript II for two-byte sets. Support for new script systems was added by so-called Language Kits. Some kits were provided with the system software, and others were sold by Apple and third parties. Application support for WorldScript was not universal, since support was a significant task. Good international support gave a marketing edge to word-processing programs such as Nisus Writer
and programs using the WASTE
text engine, since Microsoft Word
was not WorldScript aware.
In 8.5, full Unicode support was added to Mac OS through an API
called ATSUI. However, WorldScript remained the dominant technology for international text until Mac OS X, because few applications used ATSUI.
of the file. In addition to the data-fork version of TrueType and the Adobe/Microsoft
OpenType fonts, OS X also supports Apple's own data-fork-based TrueType format, called data-fork suitcases with the filename extension '.dfont'. Data-fork suitcases are old-style Mac TrueType fonts with all the data from the resource fork
transferred unchanged to the data fork. The system also supports the instances created using the "multiple master
" PostScript
variant.
Fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts folder and the /Library/Fonts folder are available to all users. Fonts stored in a user's ~/Library/Fonts folder are available to only that user. Mac OS 9
applications running in the Classic Environment can only access fonts stored in the Fonts folder in the Mac OS 9 system folder. Those fonts are also made available to native Mac OS X applications.
Mac OS X includes a software rasterizer that supports PostScript, thus eliminating the need for the Adobe Type Manager
Light program. The built-in text editing supports advanced typesetting features such as adjustable kerning and baseline, as well as a few OpenType
features.
Support for QuickDraw GX
fonts was dropped in Mac OS X in favor of TrueType fonts using AAT
features. Bitmap fonts are only used on screen if there is a corresponding vector form (which is always used in printing).
Since Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther), a utility called Font Book
has been included with Mac OS X allowing users to easily install fonts and do basic font management.
font files natively on systems prior to Mac OS X.
TrueType
is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s, and later licensed to Microsoft
, as a competitor to Adobe
's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript
, which had come to dominate the field of desktop publishing
.
The outlines of the characters in TrueType fonts are made of straight line segment
s and quadratic Bézier curve
s, rather than the cubic Bézier curves in Type 1 fonts. While the underlying mathematics of TrueType is thus simpler, many type developers prefer to work with cubic curves because they are easier to draw and edit.
While earlier versions of the Mac OS required additional software to work with Type 1 fonts (as well as at least one bitmap copy of each Type 1 font to be used), Mac OS X now includes native support for a variety of font technologies, including both TrueType and PostScript Type 1.
Microsoft, together with Adobe, have created an extended TrueType format, called OpenType
. Apple, however, is continuing to develop TrueType. A 'Zapf
' table, for example, maps composite glyphs to characters and vice versa and adds other features. The table was named, with permission, after typeface creator Hermann Zapf
.
was a complete overhaul of the Macintosh graphics system, including the font system, which was rolled out for System 7.5 in 1995. QuickDraw GX fonts could be in either TrueType or PostScript Type 1 formats, and included additional information about the glyphs and their purpose. Advanced features, such as ligatures, glyph variations, kerning information and small caps, could be used by any GX enabled application. Previously, they had typically been reserved for advanced typesetting applications.
Microsoft was refused a license to GX technology and chose to develop OpenType instead. GX typography and GX technology as a whole never saw widespread adoption. Support for GX was dropped in later versions of the system.
Apple Advanced Typography
(AAT) is a set of extensions to TrueType which cover much of the same ground as OpenType, developed independently but concurrently with the Adobe/Microsoft format (circa 1995), and is the successor to the little-used QuickDraw GX font technology. It also incorporates concepts from the Multiple Master font format, which allows multiple axes of traits to be defined and an n-dimensional number of glyphs to be accessible within that space. AAT features do not alter the underlying characters, but do affect their representation during glyph conversion.
AAT is also supported in IBM’s open source ICU
library, which is being used to implement support for AAT fonts under Linux
and other open source operating systems.
is the process by which TrueType fonts are adjusted to the limited resolution of a screen or a relatively low resolution printer. Undesired features in the rendered text, such as lack of symmetry or broken strokes, can be reduced. Hinting is performed by a virtual machine
that distorts the control points that define the glyph shapes so that they fit the grid defined by the screen better. Hinting is particularly important when rendering text at low effective resolution: that is, with few pixels per character.
Hinting is part of the TrueType specification, but Apple holds three patents in the United States
relating to the process:
Apple offers licensing of these patents. Microsoft has access to Apple's TrueType patents through cross-licensing. However, these patents have proven problematic to developers and vendors of open source software for TrueType rendering, such as FreeType
. To avoid infringing on the patents, some software disregards the hinting information present in fonts, resulting in visual artifacts. FreeType
has developed an automatic hinting engine, but it is difficult to beat the explicit hinting guidelines provided by the typeface designer. The problem of lacking hinting can also be compensated for by using anti-aliasing, although a combination of the two produces the best result.
Apple has started using subpixel rendering
in recent versions of Mac OS X. Version 10.2 introduced subpixel rendering of type and Quartz
vector graphics
. This feature is enabled using the System Preferences panel "General" (10.2) or "Appearance" (10.3), by setting the font smoothing style to "Medium — best for Flat Panel". Mac OS X 10.4 introduced an "Automatic" setting which transparently chooses either "Medium" or "Standard," depending on the type of main display. The quality of the rendering compared to Microsoft's ClearType
and FreeType
is contested, and is largely a matter of reader preference. However, Apple's approach differs from that of ClearType and FreeType in that TrueType hinting instructions are discarded for all but the smallest type sizes. This results in more consistency of rendering on Mac OS at the expense of allowing type designers a level of fine tuning through hints.
's Venice typeface, the fonts included with the original Macintosh
were designed by Susan Kare
, who also designed most of the Macintosh's original icons.
The Macintosh was an early example of a mainstream computer using fonts featuring characters of different widths, often referred to as proportional
fonts. Previously, most computer systems were limited to using monospaced fonts, requiring, for example, i and m to be exactly the same width. Vector-based fonts had yet to make an entrance in the personal computer
arena, at least for screen use, so all the original Mac's typefaces were bitmaps
. Fonts were available in multiple sizes; those sizes installed on a system would be displayed in the font menu in an outline style.
From System 1 through Mac OS 7.6
, the default system fonts for Mac OS were Chicago for menus and window titles and Geneva for Finder icons, and they could not be customized. In Mac OS 8
and Mac OS 9
, the default system font was changed to Charcoal menus and window titles, but it could be customized in Preferences.
, commuter rail line: Overbrook, Merion, Ardmore, and Rosemont. Steve Jobs
had liked the idea of using cities as the names, but they had to be "world class" cities, and so the naming convention of using the names of world cities was chosen.
A number of different variants of each font were algorithm
ically generated on-the-fly from the standard fonts. Bold, italic, outlined, underlined and shadowed variations were the most common, though some applications also included subscript and superscript.
Outline, shadow, and underline are not always supported by modern software and fonts.
character set, include a solid Apple logo. One reason for including a trademark in a font is that the copyright status of fonts and typefaces is a complicated and uncertain matter. Trademark law, on the other hand, is much stronger. Third parties cannot include the Apple logo in fonts without permission from Apple. Apple states in the MacRoman to Unicode mapping file that:
Note that the logo does have a unique PostScript
name in the Adobe Glyph List
- /apple, mapping to F8FF.
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
’s approach to typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
s, including font management and fonts
Computer font
A computer font is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats. Although the term font first referred to a set of metal type sorts in one style and size, since the 1990s it is generally used to refer to a scalable set of digital shapes that may be...
included with each system revision.
Fonts in Mac OS X
See also: List of Mac OS X fontsThe primary system font in Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
(all versions) is Lucida Grande
Lucida Grande
Lucida Grande is a humanist sans-serif typeface. It is a member of the Lucida family of typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It has been used throughout Mac OS X user interface since 1999, as well as in Safari for Windows up to the browser's version 3.2.3 released on May 12,...
. For labels and other small text, 10 pt Lucida Grande is typically used. Lucida Grande is almost identical in appearance to the prevalent Windows font Lucida Sans, but contains a much richer variety of glyph
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s.
Mac OS X ships with a number of typefaces, for a number of different scripts, licensed from several sources. Mac OS X includes Roman
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Chinese
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
fonts. It also supports sophisticated font techniques, such as ligatures and filtering.
Many of the classic Mac typefaces included with previous versions are still part of Mac OS X, including the serif typefaces New York, Palatino, and Times, the sans-serif Charcoal and Chicago, Monaco, Geneva and Helvetica. Courier, a monospaced font, also remained.
In the initial publicly released version of Mac OS X (March 2001), font support for scripts was limited to what was provided by Lucida Grande and a few fonts for the major Japanese scripts. With each major revision of the OS, fonts supporting additional scripts have been added.
Zapfino
Zapfino is a calligraphic typeface designed for Linotype by typeface designer Hermann Zapf in 1998. It is based on an alphabet Zapf originally penned in 1944...
is a calligraphic typeface designed by and named after renowned typeface designer Hermann Zapf
Hermann Zapf
Hermann Zapf is a German typeface designer who lives in Darmstadt, Germany. He is married to calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf von Hesse....
for Linotype. Zapfino utilizes advanced typographic features of the AAT "morx" table format, and is included in OS X partially as a technology demo. Ligatures and character variations are extensively used. The font is based on a calligraphic example by Zapf in 1944. The version included with Mac OS X is a single weight. Since then, Linotype has introduced “Linotype Zapfino Extra” which includes the additional “Forte” weight and even more options and alternates.
Several of the GX fonts that Apple commissioned and originally shipped with System 7.5 were ported to use Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) instead (see below) and shipped with Mac OS X 10.2 and v10.3
Mac OS X v10.3
Mac OS X Panther is the fourth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" and preceded Mac OS X Tiger...
. Hoefler Text
Hoefler Text
Hoefler Text is a contemporary serif Antiqua font that was designed for Apple Computer to demonstrate advanced type technologies. Hoefler Text was created to allow the composition of complex typography; as such it takes cues from a range of classic fonts, such as Garamond and Janson.Designed by...
, Apple Chancery and Skia are examples of fonts of this line of heritage. Other typefaces were licensed from the general offerings of leading font vendors.
Glyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s in the event that real glyphs needed to display a given character are not found in any other available font. The symbols provided by the LastResort font place glyphs into categories based on their location in the Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
system and provide a hint to the user about which font or script is required to view unavailable characters. Designed by Apple and extended by Michael Everson
Michael Everson
Michael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...
of Evertype for Unicode 4.1 coverage, the symbols adhere to a unified design. The glyphs are square with rounded corners with a bold outline. In the left and right sides of the outline, the Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
range that the character belongs to is given using hexadecimal
Hexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
digits. Top and bottom are used for one or two descriptions of the Unicode block
Unicode block
In Unicode, a block is defined as one contiguous range of code points. Blocks are named uniquely and have no overlap. They may be defined with the starting and ending code points. The block explicitly can include code points that are unassigned and non-characters. Code points not belonging to any...
name. A symbol representative of the block is centered inside the square. The typeface used for the text cutouts in the outline is Chicago, otherwise not included with Mac OS X. The LastResort font has been part of Mac OS since version 8.5, but the limited success of Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging
Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging
The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text starting with Mac OS 8.5 and in Mac OS X.It replaced the WorldScript engine for legacy encodings....
(ATSUI) on the classic Mac OS means that only users of Mac OS X are regularly exposed to it.
Of the fonts that ship with Mac OS X, Lucida Grande has the broadest repertoire. This font provides a relatively complete set of Arabic
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
, Roman
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
, Hebrew
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
, Thai
Thai alphabet
Thai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....
and Greek
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
letters and an assortment of common symbols. All in all, it contains a bit more than 2800 glyphs (including ligatures).
In Mac OS X v10.3 ("Panther"), a font called Apple Symbols
Apple Symbols
Apple Symbols is a font introduced in Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther." This is a Truetype font, intended to provide coverage for characters defined as symbols in the Unicode Standard. It continues to ship with Mac OS X as part of the default installation. Prior to Mac OS X 10.5, its path was...
was introduced. It complements the set of symbols from Lucida Grande, but also contains a number of glyphs only accessible by glyph ID (that is, they have not been assigned Unicode codepoints). A hidden font called .Keyboard contains 92 visible glyphs, most of which appear on Apple keyboards.
System 6.0.8 and earlier
Originally the Macintosh QuickDrawQuickDraw
QuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
system software supported only bitmapped fonts. The original font set was custom designed for the Macintosh and were intended to provide a highly legible screen display. These system fonts were named after large cities, e.g. New York, Chicago, and Geneva.
Bitmapped fonts were stored as resources within the System file. A utility called Font/DA Mover was used to install fonts into or extract fonts out of the System file. Fonts could also be embedded into Macintosh applications and other file types, such as a HyperCard
HyperCard
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
stack. Fonts that were not being used were stored in a suitcase file.
The ImageWriter
ImageWriter
The ImageWriter was a product line of dot matrix printers manufactured by Apple Computer's and designed to be compatible with their entire line of computers...
printer supported a higher resolution mode where bitmap fonts double the size of the screen resolution were automatically substituted for 'near letter quality' printing. (For example, a 24-point bitmapped font would be used for 12-point printing.) This feature was sometimes called two-times font printing. Some later Apple QuickDraw-based laser printers also supported four-times font printing where bitmaps quadruple the screen size were used for letter quality output.
With the introduction of the LaserWriter
LaserWriter
The LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market...
and support for PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
-compatible printers, the Mac system software initially supported outline fonts for printing only. These outline fonts could be printed in letter quality at any size. PostScript fonts came with two files; a bitmap font was installed into the System file, and an outline font file was stored in the System Folder. Some of the bitmapped 'city' fonts would be automatically substituted for PostScript fonts by the printer driver. Commercial typefaces such as Times and Helvetica began to be distributed by Apple, Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
, and others.
The widely-used Adobe Type Manager
Adobe Type Manager
Adobe Type Manager is the name of a family of computer programs created and marketed by Adobe Systems for use with their Type 1 fonts. The current version is Adobe ATM Light 4.1.2, available from Adobe's FTP .-Apple Macintosh:...
(ATM) system extension allowed PostScript outline fonts to be both displayed on screen and used with non-PostScript printers. This allowed for true WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
printing in a much broader set of circumstances than the base system software, however with a noticeable speed penalty, especially on Motorola 68000
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
-based machines.
Apple later added support for TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
outline fonts through a freely available system extension, providing similar functionality as ATM. Apple also provided TrueType outline files for the bitmapped 'city' system fonts, allowing letter quality WYSIWYG printing of those fonts.
A reboot was required after installing new fonts unless using a font management utility such as Suitcase, FontJuggler, or MasterJuggler.
System 7 – Mac OS 9
A highly touted feature of System 7System 7
System 7 is the name of a Macintosh operating system introduced in 1991.System 7 may also refer to:* System 7 , a British dance/ambient band* System 7 , 1991 album* IBM System/7, a 1970s computer system...
was integrated TrueType outline font support, which also received industry support from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. Fonts were still stored in the System file but could now be installed using drag-and-drop
Drag-and-drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop is the action of selecting a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object...
. To install new fonts, one had to quit all running applications.
Despite this, Adobe Type Manager and PostScript Type 1 fonts continued to be widely used, especially for professional desktop publishing. Eventually Adobe released a free version of their utility, called ATM Light.
In System 7.1, a separate Fonts folder appeared in the System Folder. Fonts were automatically installed when dropped on the System Folder, and became available to applications after they were restarted. Font resources were generally grouped together in suitcase files. However, rules for storing printer fonts varied greatly between different system, printer and application configurations until the advent of the new Fonts folder. Typically, they had to be stored directly in the System Folder or in the Extensions Folder.
System 7.5 added the QuickDraw GX
QuickDraw GX
QuickDraw GX was a replacement for the QuickDraw 2D graphics engine and Printing Manager inside the "classic" Mac OS. Its underlying drawing platform was a resolution-independent object oriented retained mode system, making it much easier for programmers to perform common tasks...
graphics engine. TrueType GX supported ligatures and other advanced typography features. However very little software supported these features, and PostScript remained the standard for desktop publishing software.
Starting with Mac OS 8.5, the operating system supported data fork fonts, including Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
TrueType and OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
. In addition, Apple created a new format, called data-fork suitcases. At the same time, support was added for TrueType collection files, conventionally with the filename extension
Filename extension
A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding of its contents or usage....
'.ttc'.
System versions 7 to 9 supported a maximum of 128 font suitcases and each suitcase could store multiple fonts.
Starting with version 7.1, Apple unified the implementation of non-roman script systems in a programming interface called WorldScript
WorldScript
WorldScript was the multilingual text rendering engine for Apple Macintosh before Mac OS X was introduced.Starting with version 7.1, Apple unified the implementation of non-Roman script systems in a programming interface called WorldScript. WorldScript I was used for all one-byte character sets and...
. WorldScript I was used for all one-byte character sets and WorldScript II for two-byte sets. Support for new script systems was added by so-called Language Kits. Some kits were provided with the system software, and others were sold by Apple and third parties. Application support for WorldScript was not universal, since support was a significant task. Good international support gave a marketing edge to word-processing programs such as Nisus Writer
Nisus Writer
Nisus Writer, originally Nisus, is a word processing program for the Apple Macintosh. The program is available in two varieties: Nisus Writer Express, and Nisus Writer Pro....
and programs using the WASTE
WASTE text engine
The WASTE is an Apple Macintosh text editing software library. The "text engine" allows Macintosh programmers to easily add advanced text display and editing features to their applications....
text engine, since Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
was not WorldScript aware.
In 8.5, full Unicode support was added to Mac OS through an API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
called ATSUI. However, WorldScript remained the dominant technology for international text until Mac OS X, because few applications used ATSUI.
Mac OS X
Mac OS X supports a wide variety of font formats. It supports most of the font formats used on earlier systems, where the fonts were typically stored in the resource forkResource fork
The resource fork is a construct of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and...
of the file. In addition to the data-fork version of TrueType and the Adobe/Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
OpenType fonts, OS X also supports Apple's own data-fork-based TrueType format, called data-fork suitcases with the filename extension '.dfont'. Data-fork suitcases are old-style Mac TrueType fonts with all the data from the resource fork
Resource fork
The resource fork is a construct of the Mac OS operating system used to store structured data in a file, alongside unstructured data stored within the data fork. A resource fork stores information in a specific form, such as icons, the shapes of windows, definitions of menus and their contents, and...
transferred unchanged to the data fork. The system also supports the instances created using the "multiple master
Multiple master fonts
Multiple master fonts are an extension to Adobe Systems' Type 1 PostScript fonts, now mostly superseded by the advent of OpenType...
" PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
variant.
Fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts folder and the /Library/Fonts folder are available to all users. Fonts stored in a user's ~/Library/Fonts folder are available to only that user. Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
applications running in the Classic Environment can only access fonts stored in the Fonts folder in the Mac OS 9 system folder. Those fonts are also made available to native Mac OS X applications.
Mac OS X includes a software rasterizer that supports PostScript, thus eliminating the need for the Adobe Type Manager
Adobe Type Manager
Adobe Type Manager is the name of a family of computer programs created and marketed by Adobe Systems for use with their Type 1 fonts. The current version is Adobe ATM Light 4.1.2, available from Adobe's FTP .-Apple Macintosh:...
Light program. The built-in text editing supports advanced typesetting features such as adjustable kerning and baseline, as well as a few OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
features.
Support for QuickDraw GX
QuickDraw GX
QuickDraw GX was a replacement for the QuickDraw 2D graphics engine and Printing Manager inside the "classic" Mac OS. Its underlying drawing platform was a resolution-independent object oriented retained mode system, making it much easier for programmers to perform common tasks...
fonts was dropped in Mac OS X in favor of TrueType fonts using AAT
Apple Advanced Typography
Apple Advanced Typography is Apple Inc's computer software for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid-1990s...
features. Bitmap fonts are only used on screen if there is a corresponding vector form (which is always used in printing).
Since Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther), a utility called Font Book
Font Book
Apple's Font Book is a font manager that comes with Mac OS X since version 10.3 .The program enables users to:* Preview and install font files, avoiding multiple instances of the same font....
has been included with Mac OS X allowing users to easily install fonts and do basic font management.
Third-party font managers
As desktop publishing took off and PostScript and other outline font formats joined the bitmap fonts, the need for unified font management grew. A number of third parties have created tools, such as Suitcase, for managing font sets. For example, they allowed enabling or disabling fonts on-the-fly, and storing fonts outside of their normal locations. Some even allow the use of Windows .ttfTrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
font files natively on systems prior to Mac OS X.
TrueType and PostScript
- Main articles: TrueTypeTrueTypeTrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
and PostScriptPostScriptPostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s, and later licensed to Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, as a competitor to Adobe
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
, which had come to dominate the field of desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
.
The outlines of the characters in TrueType fonts are made of straight line segment
Line segment
In geometry, a line segment is a part of a line that is bounded by two end points, and contains every point on the line between its end points. Examples of line segments include the sides of a triangle or square. More generally, when the end points are both vertices of a polygon, the line segment...
s and quadratic Bézier curve
Bézier curve
A Bézier curve is a parametric curve frequently used in computer graphics and related fields. Generalizations of Bézier curves to higher dimensions are called Bézier surfaces, of which the Bézier triangle is a special case....
s, rather than the cubic Bézier curves in Type 1 fonts. While the underlying mathematics of TrueType is thus simpler, many type developers prefer to work with cubic curves because they are easier to draw and edit.
While earlier versions of the Mac OS required additional software to work with Type 1 fonts (as well as at least one bitmap copy of each Type 1 font to be used), Mac OS X now includes native support for a variety of font technologies, including both TrueType and PostScript Type 1.
Microsoft, together with Adobe, have created an extended TrueType format, called OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
. Apple, however, is continuing to develop TrueType. A 'Zapf
OSType
OSType is the name of a four-byte sequence commonly used as an identifier in Mac OS. While the bytes can have any value, they usually display figures characterized in software programs such as those utilized in ASCII or Mac OS Roman character sets.OSType values are used to identify file data...
' table, for example, maps composite glyphs to characters and vice versa and adds other features. The table was named, with permission, after typeface creator Hermann Zapf
Hermann Zapf
Hermann Zapf is a German typeface designer who lives in Darmstadt, Germany. He is married to calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf von Hesse....
.
Proprietary technology
QuickDraw GXQuickDraw GX
QuickDraw GX was a replacement for the QuickDraw 2D graphics engine and Printing Manager inside the "classic" Mac OS. Its underlying drawing platform was a resolution-independent object oriented retained mode system, making it much easier for programmers to perform common tasks...
was a complete overhaul of the Macintosh graphics system, including the font system, which was rolled out for System 7.5 in 1995. QuickDraw GX fonts could be in either TrueType or PostScript Type 1 formats, and included additional information about the glyphs and their purpose. Advanced features, such as ligatures, glyph variations, kerning information and small caps, could be used by any GX enabled application. Previously, they had typically been reserved for advanced typesetting applications.
Microsoft was refused a license to GX technology and chose to develop OpenType instead. GX typography and GX technology as a whole never saw widespread adoption. Support for GX was dropped in later versions of the system.
Apple Advanced Typography
Apple Advanced Typography
Apple Advanced Typography is Apple Inc's computer software for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid-1990s...
(AAT) is a set of extensions to TrueType which cover much of the same ground as OpenType, developed independently but concurrently with the Adobe/Microsoft format (circa 1995), and is the successor to the little-used QuickDraw GX font technology. It also incorporates concepts from the Multiple Master font format, which allows multiple axes of traits to be defined and an n-dimensional number of glyphs to be accessible within that space. AAT features do not alter the underlying characters, but do affect their representation during glyph conversion.
AAT is also supported in IBM’s open source ICU
International Components for Unicode
International Components for Unicode is an open source project of mature C/C++ and Java libraries for Unicode support, software internationalization and software globalization. ICU is widely portable to many operating systems and environments. It gives applications the same results on all...
library, which is being used to implement support for AAT fonts under Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and other open source operating systems.
Hinting technology
HintingFont hinting
Font hinting is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing a clear, legible text...
is the process by which TrueType fonts are adjusted to the limited resolution of a screen or a relatively low resolution printer. Undesired features in the rendered text, such as lack of symmetry or broken strokes, can be reduced. Hinting is performed by a virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
that distorts the control points that define the glyph shapes so that they fit the grid defined by the screen better. Hinting is particularly important when rendering text at low effective resolution: that is, with few pixels per character.
Hinting is part of the TrueType specification, but Apple holds three patents in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
relating to the process:
- US5155805: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices (filed May 8, 1989)
- US5159668: Method and apparatus for manipulating outlines in improving digital typeface on raster output devices (filed May 8, 1989)
- US5325479: Method and apparatus for moving control points in displaying digital typeface on raster output devices (filed May 28, 1992)
Apple offers licensing of these patents. Microsoft has access to Apple's TrueType patents through cross-licensing. However, these patents have proven problematic to developers and vendors of open source software for TrueType rendering, such as FreeType
FreeType
FreeType is a software library written in C that implements a font rasterization engine. It is used to render text on to bitmaps and provides support for other font-related operations.-Details:...
. To avoid infringing on the patents, some software disregards the hinting information present in fonts, resulting in visual artifacts. FreeType
FreeType
FreeType is a software library written in C that implements a font rasterization engine. It is used to render text on to bitmaps and provides support for other font-related operations.-Details:...
has developed an automatic hinting engine, but it is difficult to beat the explicit hinting guidelines provided by the typeface designer. The problem of lacking hinting can also be compensated for by using anti-aliasing, although a combination of the two produces the best result.
Subpixel rendering
Subpixel rendering
Subpixel rendering is a way to increase the apparent resolution of a computer's liquid crystal display or Organic Light Emitting Diode display by rendering pixels to take into account the screen type's physical properties...
in recent versions of Mac OS X. Version 10.2 introduced subpixel rendering of type and Quartz
Quartz (graphics layer)
Quartz specifically refers to a pair of Mac OS X technologies, each part of the Core Graphics framework: Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositor. It includes both a 2D renderer in Core Graphics and the composition engine that sends instructions to the graphics card...
vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
. This feature is enabled using the System Preferences panel "General" (10.2) or "Appearance" (10.3), by setting the font smoothing style to "Medium — best for Flat Panel". Mac OS X 10.4 introduced an "Automatic" setting which transparently chooses either "Medium" or "Standard," depending on the type of main display. The quality of the rendering compared to Microsoft's ClearType
ClearType
ClearType is a trademark for Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. This trade-off is asserted to work well on...
and FreeType
FreeType
FreeType is a software library written in C that implements a font rasterization engine. It is used to render text on to bitmaps and provides support for other font-related operations.-Details:...
is contested, and is largely a matter of reader preference. However, Apple's approach differs from that of ClearType and FreeType in that TrueType hinting instructions are discarded for all but the smallest type sizes. This results in more consistency of rendering on Mac OS at the expense of allowing type designers a level of fine tuning through hints.
Fonts of the original Macintosh
With the sole exception of Bill AtkinsonBill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
's Venice typeface, the fonts included with the original Macintosh
Macintosh 128K
The Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
were designed by Susan Kare
Susan Kare
Susan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT , working as the Creative Director.-Background:Kare was born in Ithaca, New York and is the sister of aerospace engineer...
, who also designed most of the Macintosh's original icons.
The Macintosh was an early example of a mainstream computer using fonts featuring characters of different widths, often referred to as proportional
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
fonts. Previously, most computer systems were limited to using monospaced fonts, requiring, for example, i and m to be exactly the same width. Vector-based fonts had yet to make an entrance in the personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
arena, at least for screen use, so all the original Mac's typefaces were bitmaps
Computer font
A computer font is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats. Although the term font first referred to a set of metal type sorts in one style and size, since the 1990s it is generally used to refer to a scalable set of digital shapes that may be...
. Fonts were available in multiple sizes; those sizes installed on a system would be displayed in the font menu in an outline style.
From System 1 through Mac OS 7.6
System 7
System 7 is the name of a Macintosh operating system introduced in 1991.System 7 may also refer to:* System 7 , a British dance/ambient band* System 7 , 1991 album* IBM System/7, a 1970s computer system...
, the default system fonts for Mac OS were Chicago for menus and window titles and Geneva for Finder icons, and they could not be customized. In Mac OS 8
Mac OS 8
Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It represented the largest overhaul of the Mac OS since the release of System 7, some six years previously. It puts more emphasis on color than previous operating systems...
and Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
, the default system font was changed to Charcoal menus and window titles, but it could be customized in Preferences.
Naming
After designing the first few fonts, the team decided they needed to adopt a naming convention. First, they settled on using the names of stops along the Paoli, PennsylvaniaPaoli, Pennsylvania
Paoli is a census-designated place in Chester County near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is situated in portions of two townships: Tredyffrin and Willistown...
, commuter rail line: Overbrook, Merion, Ardmore, and Rosemont. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
had liked the idea of using cities as the names, but they had to be "world class" cities, and so the naming convention of using the names of world cities was chosen.
Variants
A number of different variants of each font were algorithmAlgorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
ically generated on-the-fly from the standard fonts. Bold, italic, outlined, underlined and shadowed variations were the most common, though some applications also included subscript and superscript.
Outline, shadow, and underline are not always supported by modern software and fonts.
The Apple logo
Apple's fonts, and the Mac OS RomanMac OS Roman
Mac OS Roman is a character encoding primarily used by Mac OS to represent text. It encodes 256 characters, the first 128 of which are identical to ASCII, with the remaining characters including mathematical symbols, diacritics, and additional punctuation marks. It is suitable for use to represent...
character set, include a solid Apple logo. One reason for including a trademark in a font is that the copyright status of fonts and typefaces is a complicated and uncertain matter. Trademark law, on the other hand, is much stronger. Third parties cannot include the Apple logo in fonts without permission from Apple. Apple states in the MacRoman to Unicode mapping file that:
- On regular US QWERTYQWERTYQWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters appearing in the topleft letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the...
keyboards, the logo character can be typed using the key combination Shift Option K . In MacRoman, the Apple logo has a hex valueHexadecimalIn mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
of 0xF0. The Apple logo has not been assigned a dedicated Unicode codepoint, but Apple uses U+F8FFU+F8FFUnicode code point U+F8FF or is the last code point in the Private Use Area in BMP. Its meaning and appearance vary depending on the font in use, but its usage in several fonts makes it the most notable code point in the private use area....
() in the Private Use Area.
Note that the logo does have a unique PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
name in the Adobe Glyph List
Adobe Glyph List
The Adobe Glyph List is a mapping of 4,281 glyph names to one or more Unicode characters. Its purpose is to provide an implementation guideline for consumers of fonts ; it lists a variety of standard names that are given to glyphs that correspond to certain Unicode character sequences...
- /apple, mapping to F8FF.
List
- AthensAthens (typeface)Athens was one of the original bitmap typefaces for the Apple Macintosh computer. It was designed by Susan Kare. An official TrueType version was never made, and Athens was rendered obsolete with the arrival of System 7....
(slab serifSlab serifIn typography, a slab serif typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular , or rounded . Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket...
) - Cairo was a bitmapBitmapIn computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
dingbatDingbatA dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....
font, most famous for the dogcowDogcowThe dogcow, also known as Clarus the Dogcow, is a bitmapped image first introduced by Apple. It is the shape of a dog, originally created in 1983 as part of the Cairo font by Susan Kare as the glyph for “z.” That image was later chosen for the Mac OS Print Setup dialog box, though it needed to be...
at the z character position. - ChicagoChicago (typeface)Chicago is a sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare for Apple Computer. It was used in the Macintosh operating system user interface between 1984 and 1997 and was an important part of Apple’s brand identity. It is also used in early versions of the iPod user interface...
(sans-serifSans-serifIn typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....
) was the default MacintoshMacintoshThe Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
system font in SystemMac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
1–7.6. Also seen on LCD screens of earlier iPodIPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
models. - GenevaGeneva (typeface)Geneva is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare for Apple Computer. It is one of the oldest fonts shipped with the Macintosh operating system. The original version was a bitmap font, but later versions were converted to TrueType when that technology became available on the Macintosh...
(sans-serif) is designed for small pointPoint (typography)In typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure, being a subdivision of the larger pica. It is commonly abbreviated as pt. The point has long been the usual unit for measuring font size and leading and other minute items on a printed page....
sizes and prevalent in all versions of the Mac user interface. Its name betrays its inspiration by the SwissSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
typeface HelveticaHelveticaHelvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....
. 9 point Geneva is built into Old World ROMOld World ROMOld World ROM Macintosh computers are the Macintosh models that use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM chip, usually in a socket . All Macs prior to the iMac use Old World ROM, while the iMac and all subsequent models until the introduction of the Intel-based EFI Models are New World ROM machines...
Macs. - London (blackletterBlackletterBlackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes...
) was an Old English-style font. - Los Angeles (script) was a thin font that emulated handwriting.
- Mobile was a bitmapBitmapIn computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
dingbatDingbatA dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....
font. Before System 6System 6System 6 is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was released in 1988 by Apple Computer and was part of the Mac OS line of operating systems. System 6 was shipped with various Macintosh computers until it was succeeded by System 7 in 1991. The boxed...
, it was known as Taliesin. - MonacoMonaco (typeface)Monaco is a monospaced sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare and Kris Holmes. The face shipped with all versions of Mac OS X and was already present with previous versions of the Mac operating system...
(sans-serif, monospaced) is a fixed-width font well-suited for 9–12 pt use. 10 point Monaco is built into Old World ROMOld World ROMOld World ROM Macintosh computers are the Macintosh models that use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM chip, usually in a socket . All Macs prior to the iMac use Old World ROM, while the iMac and all subsequent models until the introduction of the Intel-based EFI Models are New World ROM machines...
Macs. - New YorkNew York (typeface)New York is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1983 for the Macintosh computer by Susan Kare, Charles Bigelow, and Kris Holmes. It was originally titled “Rosemont.” The typeface was the standard bitmap serif font for the early Macintosh operating systems...
(serifSerifIn typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface . A typeface without serifs is called sans serif or sans-serif, from the French sans, meaning “without”...
) was a Times RomanTimes RomanTimes New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931, created by Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype. It was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated...
-inspired font. The name alluded to the inspiration, even though the Times for which Times Roman was created was that of London, not New York. - San FranciscoSan Francisco (typeface)San Francisco was one of the original bitmap typefaces for the Apple Macintosh computer. It was designed by Susan Kare to mimic the ransom note effect. An official TrueType version was never made, and San Francisco was rendered obsolete with the arrival of System 7., by Hank Gillette, is a free...
was a whimsical font where each character looked as if it was a cutout from a newspaper, creating an intentional ransom note effectRansom note effectIn typography, the ransom note effect is the result of using an excessive number of juxtaposed typefaces. It takes its name from the appearance of a stereotypical ransom note, with the message formed from words or letters cut randomly from a magazine or newspaper in order to avoid using...
. - Toronto (slab serifSlab serifIn typography, a slab serif typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular , or rounded . Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket...
) was a geometric design. It was removed from System 6System 6System 6 is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was released in 1988 by Apple Computer and was part of the Mac OS line of operating systems. System 6 was shipped with various Macintosh computers until it was succeeded by System 7 in 1991. The boxed...
and later. - Venice (script) was a calligraphicCalligraphyCalligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
font designed by Bill AtkinsonBill AtkinsonBill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
.