Font problem - Helvetica Neue

I've personally decided to just leave the .dfonts alone and work with OpenType in my design/pre-press environment - I find the baseline shift to be minimal between Postscript and OpenType, and there's no reflow that I noticed. All character widths and letter spacing seems to be the same in that respect.

I do have to replace everything manually, but I like having as many OT fonts in my documents as possible anyway. My job purchased the entire library for our department, so with the exception of a few fonts here & there I'm completely on OT.

For those who must use older versions of Helvetica, and preferably PostScript versions since the .dfonts are not, then here's something I thought of a couple of weeks ago.

If you agree, then feel free to copy the following text, or refashion it in your own words and leave feedback to Apple on changing their Helvetica fonts so they stop conflicting with other versions.
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Changing all of the OS X programs that now rely on Helvetica or Helvetica Neue to a different font would be quite a bit of work for Apple's programmers. Fonts wouldn't fit titles correctly, baselines would shift, etc.

The main problem is that Apple's supplied Helvetica fonts have the same internal names as the various PostScript versions that publishers use, making font conflicts certain and difficult to resolve since Apple's fonts are in the System folder and therefore always get precedence, unless you do a lot of jockeying around to get those fonts out of the System folder. But then you're messing up Apple's applications.

So do this instead. Long ago, Apple supplied Apple Chancery as a free alternative to the then popular Zapf Chancery. Do the same thing with these Helvetica fonts. Change them to Apple Helvetica and Apple Helvetica Neue. Most importantly, then also change the internal names so they stop conflicting with other, older versions of Helvetica.

Now all Apple would have to do after updating the font names is to change the font names their apps use to look for the Apple versions. Nothing would shift on screen since everything else would be the same as far as leading, baseline shift, kerning, etc., It would still be the identical font as before. Just with a different name.

Everyone would be happy. Apple's Helvetica fonts could remain as system fonts and they'd stop causing migraines for everyone else who must use other versions of Helvetica.

Great idea - here's hoping they listen!

I did a complete switch to OpenType and I have had no problems at all. This was after all sorts of problems after updating to Leopard.

I am trying to install Helvetica Neue Condensed. It is a PostScript Type 1 font. I deleted the Helvetica Neue fonts from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder and the ProtectedFonts/ folder and installed the Helvetica Neue Condensed suitcase in the /Library/Fonts folder. I can see the new fonts in Font Book and can use them in TextEdit, however, I cannot see them in any other application. Placing the desired font in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder fails as well. What am I doing wrong?

Hi,
Thanks to Kurt? i have done as he suggested and removed DHelveticas from my System. Sure enough I was still receiving conflict warnings. A quick look at the Sensis database (I use Suitcase Fusion for font management) gave me the following information. Open up Fontbook preferences and deselect "Auto font activation, and Alert me if system fonts change". Happy to say end of my problems , back to using Postscript versions and no more warnings.

I've battled with this issue for ages now and now, thanks to your post, have finally been able to fix it... thanks!

A couple of points:

1. I have placed the Helvetica.dfont back into the two system font folders (fonts and protected font) because it messed up a lot of Apple applications (like Mail) even if I selected the Postscript replacement in preferences (some parts of my Mail messages appeared in a Cyrillic font). This is no major issue - I'll just use Helv Neue for all my desktop publishing work and Helv for Apple apps.

2. I still get an alert from Suitcase Fusion that there are font conflicts with the two versions of Helv Neue (System and Postscript) even though I've removed the System version. It's more of an inconvenience really because, despite the alert, Suitcase still opens the Postscript versions... I just have to dismiss 4 or 5 alerts every time I restart my Mac (which is a pain in the backside because it's a laptop and I shut it down frequently). If anyone knows how to avoid the alerts I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for the tip though.

(-:

Sorry... should have read petetheprinta's last post... it answered part two of my issues!

Anxious to hear how renaming the Helvetica Neue font goes. I have Fontographer. Will have to boot up an old G3 to try it out.

Thanks Kurt - I was starting to lose faith in the old Apple's "Think Different" campaign. I bought my Mac Pro a few weeks ago and it feel nothing like a Mac. It seems that over the years we are given less and less freedom to think and work differently. Let's hope that Apple will consider its loyal professional tier and put more effort to help their needs by remaining different and unique as we accustomed to over the years, otherwise Mac will turn into a fancy looking PC 😟