Mac OS X Font Locations | Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition

In Mac OS X, you can store fonts in six locations. Multiple font locations enable you to have more control over your fonts than if there was only a single location. If several users share the same machine, you can choose to keep their fonts separate and inaccessible from each other, so they cannot steal or change another user’s fonts. You can also make certain fonts available to be shared by all the users of the machine. If you want to share fonts over a network with other machines, you can do that. And all this can be done by placing fonts in different locations.

Additionally, certain locations are used to store fonts reserved for a particular function. For example, some applications come with special fonts they need, so these fonts must be accessible in a separate location. The system software needs its own very secure place for its essential fonts, where users are not permitted to change them. And the Classic environment needs its own separate place for fonts to support its applications.

There is a background reason, too. The Unix operating system features multiple font directories, for many of the same purposes mentioned above. Mac OS X is Unix based, so it was a natural decision to take advantage of its very useful font locations scheme and build on it.

When a Mac OS X application asks the system to find a font, the system looks through these locations in the sequence they are numbered below. It uses the first font match it finds. So, if you have different versions of the same font in different locations, Mac OS X will use whichever is in the highest folder in the following list:

Application’s own fonts folder (if it has one): Certain applications have private font folders inside the application’s folder. If they do, this folder is the first to be checked, and any fonts found here will be used instead of duplicate fonts in other folders, but only for that specific application.
User’s Home fonts folder at /Users/username/Library/Fonts: No one but the user can access these fonts. This is the most common location for fonts to be kept for most users.
Main font folder at /Library/Fonts: Fonts kept here can be accessed by all users with accounts on the machine. Only a user with an administrator login can change the contents of this folder.
Network fonts at /Network/Library/Fonts: This folder is inside the Network icon — in Mac OS 10.3, a shiny gray ball with stars inside a clear cube that can be found on the top level of the hierarchy, along with the machine’s hard drive(s). The contents of this Fonts folder are actually located on another computer on your network, for instance a Mac OS X server running NetInfo, in order to share a consistent set of fonts with many users. All the fonts in this location are always in the activated state.
System fonts at /System/Library/Fonts: This location stores the fonts used by the system software to be used in menus, dialogs, and icons. You can see the fonts, but you cannot ordinarily change them. Later in the Chapter a method for modifying these fonts under certain situations is described. No additions of user fonts should be added to this folder.
Classic fonts at Mac OS 9/System Folder/Fonts: This is the Fonts folder for the copy of Mac OS 9 that is used to run the Classic environment. This is the only folder that Classic applications can access fonts from. Mac OS X applications can also make use of fonts in this location.

So, with all these possible locations, where do you put your fonts? The answer to this question varies, depending on your situation. Find the situation below which best describes yours:

If you are the only user of the machine and you will not be running any Classic applications, put your fonts in the /Users/username/Library/Fonts folder. This solution is perhaps the easiest and the one that most users of Mac OS X utilize. In this situation, you could also put fonts in the /Library/Fonts folder, but the system checks this location after the User’s fonts folder, and if you ever decide to create new user accounts, they will be able to access all your fonts. Stick with the first one.

If you expect to be running Classic applications as well as Mac OS X applications, you can put your fonts in the System Folder:Fonts folder of the copy of Mac OS 9 you will use to run Classic.

The System Folder/Fonts folder is the only fonts folder that applications running in the Classic environment can get fonts from, and Mac OS X applications can also use these fonts. This solution makes it easy for a Mac OS 9 user to upgrade to Mac OS X, because they have to do exactly nothing to have all their present fonts work with Mac OS X.

Tip

If you manage your fonts by putting them in the Classic Fonts folder, be aware that font name conflicts can occur with fonts in locations higher in the search order. For example, if you have a PostScript version of Times in the Classic Fonts folder, it will work with Classic applications with no problem. But for all Mac OS X applications, it will be overridden by the Times in Mac OS X’s /System/Library/Fonts folder. To solve this problem, remove the duplicate Mac OS X system fonts, as explained later in this Chapter.

You can do a combination of the two previous solutions. Keep the fonts your Classic apps need in the Classic Fonts folder, and the fonts you will use with your Mac OS X apps in the /Users/username/Library/Fonts folder.
If you expect to share the machine with multiple users, you can install the fonts they all will share in the /Library/Fonts folder. As the machine’s administrator, you can create their user accounts with regular user privileges (not administrator privileges). This way, if they want to install personal fonts, the users can install them to the Fonts folder
in their Home directory only, at /Users/username/Library/Fonts. They cannot steal or change each other’s fonts, or alter the shared fonts, because they do not have permission to access these locations. This is the best solution for schools sharing a machine among many students, or for machines used by graphic design freelancers who have been known to bring their own personal fonts on the job.
If you want many users to access the same Universal set of fonts, which you as the administrator can change at will, you can share the fonts with a Mac OS X file server running NetInfo, and your users can be set up to access the fonts in the Network/Library/Fonts location. This solution is good for schools and computer labs, and is best for managing a relatively small number of fonts that you want to be consistently available for the users. There are better solutions for graphic production and large numbers of fonts. Be aware that if the font server goes down, or the network goes down, users will not be able to access the fonts.
If you are a graphic designer and have zillions of fonts, you probably use font management software now, and will want to use one in Mac OS X. In which case, read on; the next section will discuss how to do this.

Please note that wherever you put your fonts in Mac OS X 10.2 and above, you may nest your fonts inside subfolders, and Mac OS X can activate them. Many users were not happy with the inability of previous versions to do this; it is no longer an issue.