Why, HELVETICA, why?

Question

Level 2

465 points

Why, HELVETICA, why?

Once again, the mighty Helvetica has brought my system to it's knees.

Well, not literally 😉 but I just imported my Helvetica collection into FontBook, and lo and behold, all my system fonts are all wacky!!

iTunes
iCal
Address Book
Mail

I even told FontBook NOT to "auto activate" ANY fonts I import, and it's SUPPOSED to tell me if there's a "conflict". ...so, what gives?

Why, oh why, would my computer even LET FontBook override a font that it uses for SYSTEM DISPLAY?!

And it's not even a slightly different version of the same font, its a version of Helvetica oblique!

I don't want to sift through 30 versions of Helvetica! How can I keep this from happening?

e

3.2GHz 8-Core MacPro, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Apr 8, 2008 2:34 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 8, 2008 2:37 PM in response to Ed State

How many helvetica fonts can there be? I figure it's probably a name conflict somewhere, and I'd definitely not entrust FontBook to catch all conflicts. Sounds like the system is just grabbing whatever it finds that's called "Helvetica" and is using that.

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Answer 2

emad&c

Level 1

60 points

Apr 8, 2008 5:47 PM in response to Ed State

Did you have alert me if system fonts change on?

Heres some fonts i know about

Helvetica.dfont
Helvetica neue

some versions ok some not

http://www.prepressure.com/?s=leopard

heres a great site for this type of thing

russ

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Answer 3

emad&c

Level 1

60 points

Apr 8, 2008 6:05 PM in response to emad&c

Oh, and when you have removed the fonts from your user in fontbook don't forget to restart as they can still look screwed up.

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Answer 4

emad&c

Level 1

60 points

Apr 8, 2008 6:17 PM in response to emad&c

Just recreated it, but with everything on, alert me when system fonts changes etc.

It could be that even thou its the same font it might be a different version of it thus creating a conflict but not alerting you about it.

eg helvetica neue in my systems folder is version 6.0d5e1

helvetica in my systems folder is version 6.0d7e1, putting in another helvetica version 001.006 causes a conflict but does not tell me or flag it up.?

What do you think

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Answer 5

Ed State Author

Level 2

465 points

Apr 9, 2008 6:24 AM in response to Topher Kessler

There's a bunch, actually.

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Answer 6

Ed State Author

Level 2

465 points

Apr 9, 2008 6:46 AM in response to Ed State

Okay. Here's what I did.

I used Time Machine to grab my "before" copy of my ~user/library/fonts folder. And, it turns out, there wasn't ANY helveticas in it! So... all the important ones were in the uber peligroso ~system/library/fonts folder. And the ones I added through FontBook (~user/library/fonts) were simply overriding the important system versions.

So I did something bold. In FontBook I disabled ALL versions of helvetica, and made sure to override ALL the warnings.

Then I restarted.

The restart took a while ⚠, and when I finally logged in, Mail "unexpectedly quit". But then, everything was back to normal.

In FontBook, all the Helveticas were off... EXCEPT the system versions, which my Mac had turned back on. The PROPER versions. Many of which have the exact same name as other versions.

I even checked w/ TimeMachine, and everything's still in the proper places. But through FontBook, only the RIGHT versions of helvetica are now activated.

So when I need good 'ol Helvetica for design, I'll venture into the folder I made, in FontBook named Helvetica, and I'll only turn on/off the ones I need.

But jeesh. You'd think Apple wouldn't allow a USER version of a font to override the preferred SYSTEM version!

e

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Answer 7

Kurt Lang

Level 9

69,991 points

Apr 9, 2008 7:05 AM in response to Ed State

But jeesh. You'd think Apple wouldn't allow a USER version of a font to override the preferred SYSTEM version!

In order to use your preferred versions of Helvetica, you must remove the OS X versions from the System folder. Instructions on how to do so are in section 4 of my article, Font Management in OS X.

The link, or one of the links above directs you to my personal web site. While the information is free, it does ask for a contribution. As such, I am required by Apple's rules for these discussions to include the following disclaimer.
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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Answer 8

Ed State Author

Level 2

465 points

Apr 9, 2008 7:23 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Sry, didn't mean to confuse.

My point was that I DIDN'T want to override the system versions. And I was quite surprised that it did!

And yes, I had everything checked and unchecked in FontBook that was supposed to keep that from happening.

e

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Answer 9

Kurt Lang

Level 9

69,991 points

Apr 9, 2008 7:34 AM in response to Ed State

And yes, I had everything checked and unchecked in FontBook that was supposed to keep that from happening.

Well, it's supposed to. But when you create font conflicts, there's no telling which fonts will get bumped from your lists. Only one or the other will ever appear when there's a conflict. Sometimes, neither.

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