I've looked in a few places for this and there are no good explanations.
[Tex/LaTex] What exactly are the “[ ]” for in “\usepackage[]{}”
packages
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I am not familiar with play-writing, so this is merely a technical note.
The TUGboat article you mention was written in 2004 by the dramatist package author, while the most recent version of the package is dated 2005. As such, there seems to have been some modifications made to the code causing the example to not compile. For the example to compile properly, \Character should be used as
\Character[MAXIMILIAN, COUNT VON MOOR.]{OLD MOOR}{moor}
\Character[FRANCIS, his Sons.]{FRANCIS}{fran}
with the first argument being optional rather than mandatory.
The optional argument is retrieved using \persona@<Roman> where <Roman> denotes a capitalized Roman numeral, sequentially numbered as they are defined. As such
\makeatletter
\persona@I \par
\persona@II
\makeatletter
prints
MAXIMILIAN, COUNT VON MOOR. FRANCIS, his Sons.
The above mechanism is implemented to some extent when using \dodramperlist, which prints the persona list of the play (should be used within the drama environment).
As far as I can see there are four different cases. The first three cases concern fonts with direct LaTeX support (there are packages) with different licenses, while the fourth addresses fonts without direct LaTeX support, no matter how they are licensed:
a) Free fonts in the TL repository like xcharter
On a well maintained, recent distribution like TL2013 on MacOS it is very likely, that simply updating your system with the TeX Live Utility will install everything needed.
If you don’t have a full installation, just install the package with TeX Live Utility or by running sudo tlmgr install xcharter in a terminal. (The instructions on font installation, which are often found in the documentation of font packages, are only of import if you are not using a package manager.)
This applies to a whole range of fonts like dejavu, utopia, libertine, mathpazo and gentium to name just a few.
b) Non-free fonts like garamondx
There is a number of fonts, including garamondx, which can be installed using the script getnonfreefonts. In order to do so, follow the instructions here.
c) Non-free fonts with LaTeX support like Minion Pro
Other popular fonts like Minion Pro have LaTeX support but need to be installed manually. Usually there are detailed instructions accompanying the packages. In some cases, like Minion Pro, you can even find scripts that do the work for you.
d) Fonts without direct support
There is a huge class of commercial and free fonts without direct LaTeX support. They can be used with fontspec (this option requires XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX).
More on manual font installation here.
So, to generalize a bit: if a package contains a font and the package is in the TL repository then installing it with a package manager (like tlmgr) should suffice.
Best Answer
[]are used for passing values for package options.Examples
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}loads the language pack with the option ngerman for the German language.\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}loads font encoding with the T1 font encoding that is an 8-bit encoding.