From the course: Font Management Essential Training

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Understanding dfonts

Understanding dfonts

From the course: Font Management Essential Training

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Understanding dfonts

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- [Instructor] If you've ever worked on a Macintosh computer since the debut of OS 10, you might have noticed a kind of font called the dfont. Most dfonts are high quality fonts that work just fine for many purposes on the Mac, but they can cause some issues with font management and output, so let's take a few minutes to understand dfonts. Let's begin with the name dfont. This is short for datafork TrueType font. In the days before system 10, Macintosh files contained two separate areas where they stored information: the data fork and the resource fork. The resource fork was used to store graphical information and metadata, including things like file icons. The data fork held what you would think of as the actual contents of the file, like the text in a word processing document. When Apple was working on System 10, they needed to come up with a new font format, because Unix, the foundation of System 10, doesn't support resource forks in the files. The solution apple came up with was…

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