removing helvetica and H... neue

There definitely is a way around the issue. For those in the graphics business who don't want to use Truetype fonts it really is something that needs to be done.

Check Extensis' website for a document labelled "Managing Fonts in OS X" (or something close to that); it's a PDF. It will go over the fine details of what you can and can not remove.

That still doesn't take care of the Helvetica problem, though. For that, read this article:

http://www.macworld.com/article/61302/2007/12/helvetica-leopard.html

Hope this helps. It's something I plan to do this weekend for our workstations.

This particular workaround is a very tiny risk for a careful person and certainly nothing that can't be easily undone.

As far as updates go, I cannot answer that question since I haven't had to go through that experience yet. It's not a major job though so if it needs to be redone, so be it.

It's a fact that the Apple Truetype version of Helvetica can wreak havoc on documents that were created with Postscript fonts and very few designers want to
have to go through a multipage document fixing everything.

Then there's the problem of those who are unaware of the issue who load Postscript fonts along with the Truetype System version and encounter difficulties at print time.

Apple's engineers made a mistake when they made such widely used fonts as Helvetica and Helvetica Neue a part of the required System font library. They really should undo their mistake in a future version of the OS.

If they had gone the whole nine yards and included every style of those two families as part of the System font library that would have been acceptable to me, but they didn't. As a designer, I need the entire family available in a common format.

So I need to fix it and the risk is very, very small that something will go wrong.

I have several hundred documents using helvetica and I periodically need to do updates. The version of ttf Helvetica Nueu that is in 10.5 is really causing a great pains in my workflow. I cant believe Apple did this, why don't they use Ariel instead of Helvetica! I got rid of it when using 10.3 with no problem. The ttf versions have completely different kerning tables, my type reflows and blows away the original layout. This is eating up precious time that I can't afford to lose. I really hope Apple fixes this problem it is the worst nightmare I have ever experienced using a Mac! If your reading this Apple and I hope you are please eliminate this problem.