what are fonts with the extension "dfont"?

Before touching anything read Kurt Lang's page on the topic.

AK

The .dfont is just an indicator to the type of font it is. It's short for Data fork font. All fonts in OS 9 and earlier had their data stored in the resource fork.

In OS X, a .dfont is still TrueType data, but has its data stored in the data fork. This change in font structure was likely brought along with the UNIX system which underlies OS X. Which is also why Mac users could suddenly use Windows TrueType .ttf fonts, which also have their data in the data fork (there is only one fork on a Windows/DOS formatted disk).

Great article...

Awwwww, shucks! Thanks. 🙂

Hi Kurt - I have often found it helpful, and recommended it to others. Please keep updating it.

AK

I have often found it helpful, and recommended it to others.

Thanks, Austin. That whole thing arose for two original reasons. One, I just wanted to get my head around why they were so many "Fonts" folders in OS X compared to the one and only such folder in OS 9. And two, being in prepress, I needed to know how many fonts I could disable without crippling the OS so the fonts OS X came with didn't interfere with the PostScript fonts we must use.

Please keep updating it.

Dat be da plan! 🙂

I have a file created on a Mac that I need to open in Windows. It's an Adobe InDesign file which opens just fine, but I'm missing a couple of fonts. The creator sent me the Apple fonts, but they are dfonts. How can I convert/use them in Windows?

How can I convert/use them in Windows?

About the only way is to use a program such as TransType to convert them to a format that can be used in Windows.

OpenType (PostScript or TrueType format) would be best since that font could then be used on both Mac and Windows. It would also pretty much be a requirement in order to translate the fonts without losing any glyphs. If you were to translate it to Windows Type 1 PostScript or the original TrueType .ttf style, it would possibly cut off the glyphs at 256, since that's all the old 8 bit fonts are supposed to have. OpenType can have a bit over 65,000 (256 squared).