I was reading about Bill Gates' famous "640KB" quote, when I came upon http://www.faktoider.nu/640kb_eng.html, a nice article about the quote and its historical context. However, the article also contained this curious paragraph:
This wasn't, of course, the first or last time such limits were set; all systems that handles memory, or does some other kind of addressing, have built-in limits somewhere, and when they are designed the limits are set comfortably high. But that doesn't mean the designer is convinced that the limit will suffice forever. (A similar example in the Macintosh world is the inital limit of 128 fonts – not on a single machine, but on all Macs, worldwide. This fact is somewhat less well known than the 640 kB-quote.)
(emphasis mine). Now, that's a weird limit to have – worldwide, Macs could only have 128 distinct fonts? At what point was that ever true, and how could such a limit even work? Googling this suggested there was a limit of 128 font suitcases on classic Mac OS, but that applies to a single machine and not "worldwide". I couldn't find any other information about this font limit.
So what does this 128-font limit refer to?
Best Answer
As per http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fonts_on_Macintosh, System versions 7 to 9 supported a maximum of 128 font suitcases and each suitcase could store multiple fonts.
However, according to http://laegernelipkesgade.dk/Fonts/kptype/Kontrapunkt%20Typefaces/README.txt Macintosh System 9.x allows you to open 512 suitcases at once. Macintosh System 8.x and earlier only allow you to open 128 font suitcases at one time. If you exceed these limits, not all the fonts you install will work.
If you search for "128" you should find the above statements.