>How do other systems, especially OS-X handle it?
You'll have to ask Apple I guess.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/ATS_Concepts/a...
OS X handles it quite well and quite transparently. However, it's also
not built to do the network operations X11 is, so that's one thing X11
has over OS X if you're into things like that. But you can share fonts
using ASIP, SMB, NFS, etc.
In any case, here's a quick breakdown:
ATS Server: The ATS client communicates directly to the ATS server,
which is a separate process. The ATS server maintains the font database
and performs such tasks as activating and deactivating fonts, supplying
glyph outline data, and obtaining information from font tables.
-- worth noting that clients (applications or higher-level frameworks
like Cocoa/Carbon) never really access font tables directly, nor do they
ever really _need_ to have access to the font file itself.
Font locations:
~/Library/Fonts - fonts specific for a user
/Library/Fonts - fonts for all users on the local machine
/System/Library/Fonts - core system fonts and never altered
/Network/Library/Fonts - network shared fonts
Applications can also receive notifications of font
activation/deactivation so they know to update their font menus or font
lists.
Its a fairly clean system, deals with almost all types of fonts
transparently, and of course it can use the TrueType hinting since Apple
has these "patents".
Dan