[This is a good example of something that's not a distinct character, but is a different glyph. That is, it's still an acute accent, just a different way of drawing it. In OpenType this could be handled by locale-specific alternate glyphs in the font. I'd suggest asking over on Typophile for some recommendations of fonts that have shallower acute accents. - T]

[I think that would depend on your definition of "obsolete." I wouldn't buy a new Type 1 font today, but they still work in pretty much all the places/apps they ever have. There aren't a lot of WPF applications out there on Windows. - T]

Currently we use Framemaker 8 to produce large training manuals using all Type 1 fonts, and whenever we try to substitute Open Type fonts, the Distiller pulls the Type 1 fonts anyway, even when they don’t seem to be installed on the system.

[You'd need to be more specific about how you're substituting the OpenType fonts for me to comment. For Adobe's fonts, the OpenType versions all have different names from the Type 1 versions, so the situation you describe would not be possible. - T]

Much of what we’ve read indicates that some of the newer applications won’t even recognize Type 1 fonts.

[There hasn't been much change in this area in recent years. If major software vendors are making font-using apps that use Windows Presentation Foundation, that would be an issue. See http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2005/10/phasing_out_typ.html But otherwise, not so much. A few apps or features of apps don't work with Type 1 fonts, but that's nothing new. Notable offenders are Visio, AutoCAD, and the WordArt feature in MS Word. - T]