

No problem (well, there were sometimes cache-related problems, but those were easily solved by adding back or enabling your own version of the deleted font, and before Tiger you probably had to clean the font cache as well). In Tiger and earlier systems, you could delete such fonts by selecting, deleting, then authenticating as an admin. These “required” system fonts were (and still are) stored in: In the past, pro font users tended to remove problematic system fonts such as Helvetica, because they tended to conflict with the users’ own preferred fonts of the same name. Pay special notice to Chuck’s warnings about using this technique at the end: I’ll include what Chuck found in his own words. The latest resource is the PDF, “Advanced Typography with Mac OS X Tiger.” Refer to the section, “Optimizing a Production System,” beginning on page 22. The method of removing nonessential fonts has been officially documented by Apple for past Mac OS X systems. I was informed of this change today by font guru and consulting colleague, Chuck Weger of Elara Systems, and I wanted to pass this on to InDesignSecrets readers. If you are one of those users, you should know that there’s an important change in system behavior in Leopard and a workaround.

In previous versions of Mac OS X, experienced design and prepress users who wanted to optimize their production computers have removed nonessential system fonts, especially those which conflicted with PostScript Type 1 fonts of the same name?for example, Helvetica or Times.
