Sources for Macintosh-compatible Fonts (All)

This is a portion of an article that originally appeared in the ClarisWorks Journal, the monthly publication of the ClarisWorks Users Group, Box 701010, Plymouth, MI 48170; (313) 454-1969; Fax: (313) 454-1965. Copyright ClarisWorks Users Group; reprinted with permission.

This information was provided by Claris Corporation on 16 March 1998, and incorporated into Apple Computer's Tech Info Library.

There are three general sources for Macintosh-compatible fonts: commercial fonts, shareware fonts, and public domain fonts. Within these categories, you will find bit-mapped fonts and outline fonts in multiple formats (PostScript and TrueType).

Apple includes a variety of fonts with its system software and with its printers. These fonts provide a good foundation for a font collection, but other sources offer more variety.

Bit-mapped Fonts

Today, there are virtually no commercial sources for bit-mapped fonts. However, you can still get bit-mapped fonts from font designers who put their fonts in the public domain or who distribute their fonts as "shareware" (where the user agrees to pay for a font if he or she decides to use the font). Shareware and public domain fonts are available from on-line services such as CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie, from resellers such as EduCom, or from computer user groups.

Outline / Scalable Fonts

Mail order vendors offer a large selection of commercial outline fonts at discounted prices. Retail computer stores offer them too, but their collections are often less complete. Adobe, Bitstream, and Casady and Greene are the major commercial "font foundries" for PostScript and TrueType fonts, but there are others (e.g., FontBank).


In an innovative marketing approach, Adobe recently put their entire font collection on a CD-ROM in a "locked" format. When you buy the disk, the company gives you the passwords to unlock the font combinations you select. Later, if you want additional fonts, you simply pay a fee for the necessary passwords.

Developers also produce outline fonts that they put in the public domain or distribute as shareware. In the case of shareware fonts, the font you initially receive may not include all the characters, but the shareware designer will send a disk with the full version when you remit the shareware fee.

Commercial fonts are usually well-designed throughout, but the visual quality of shareware and public domain designs varies, so test these fonts thoroughly before including them in your collection.

A Legal Note

Several shareware and public domain fonts produce documents that look identical to those printed with available commercial fonts. This might seem like an infringement of copyright, but it can be legal.


Under U.S. copyright law, any shape that can be read by a human as part of a character set cannot be copyrighted. So, it is possible to legally duplicate a commercial outline font, as long as you meet two conditions:

1. The code sent to the printer to reproduce the characters cannot be the same as the code sent by the original font.

2. You cannot use the original font name.

Note that it is a violation to copy outlines of symbols such as the character included in all Adobe fonts for the Macintosh and other special characters, such as "dingbats".

Published Date: Feb 18, 2012