Multiple Master Fonts

Multiple Master fonts are a variation of PostScript Type1 format. They carry a " MM" in the font name. In contrast to the usual individual sections of a font (eg, regular, italic, bold and bold italic ) Multiple Master fonts offer the possibility to generate any variations of a font by the user. What factors are modifiable, is different from font to font - typically include line thickness, width of the letters and optical sizes. Some fonts can even generate intermediates of serif and sans serif. The user can use slider to set the desired properties and generate a font instance that can be used as a regular font in the application programs then.

Multiple Master fonts could never prevail across the board and are now no longer being developed or marketed by Adobe itself, but retain a certain importance as a flexible replacement font in Adobe Reader. In Mac OS X Multiple Master fonts are still supported, but you can not generate any more instances of the application.