Font Formats
Today, OS X supports five font formats without the use of additional software: PostScript Type 1, PostScript Multiple Master, TrueType, OpenType, and dfont.
Note
Many fonts are available in several of these formats. Despite having the same name, they may not offer the same characters, especially foreign-language characters and special symbols. Also, font makers add new characters over time to their fonts, so an older version of a font may have fewer special characters than the newer version. In either case, you can have a compatibility issue if you share files with other people whose fonts may be a different version or a different format.
When the Mac debuted in 1984, there was just one font format, a bitmap format of fixed sizes. (A bitmap is a series of dots, or pixels, that combine to form a shape.) Each font's styles were rendered for each size as a series of pixels. That meant you could get 9-, 10-, and 12-point text, but not 11- or 13-point. Because the professional typesetting industry also used phototypesetting technology that rendered fonts at only specific sizes, that didn't feel like a limitation. But since then, the world of fonts has changed dramatically.
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