Remove Helvetica Neue

Have you read this section of my article? Scroll down a bit to the subheading, Removing Helvetica, Helvetica Neue and Helvetica Light in Leopard through Mountain Lion.

Though, when I remove the font Applications such as InDesign, Quark and the MS Office suite will no longer recognize any other font that is not located in the System/Font folder.

That shouldn't happen. All apps should still see any and all other active fonts on the system.

If you launched Font Book after the safe mode startup to clear Font Book's database, it will have created another database. Any damaged fonts on the system will typically corrupt Font Book's database, which in turn often causes the issue of some apps seeing available fonts, but not others.

If Font Book is still off the system, then do a safe mode startup again to ensure its database is gone. Then follow these steps to remove all font cache data from the system.

Close all running applications. From an administrator account, open the Terminal app and enter the following command. You can also copy/paste it from here into the Terminal window:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

Terminal will then ask for your admin password. As you type, it will not show anything, so be sure to enter it correctly.

This command removes all font cache files. Both for the system and the current logged in user account. After running the command, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.

This may, or may not help, but it will ensure that Font Book, its database, and font cache files are taken out of the equation.

You could invest in Suitcase Fusion. When you enable your Type 1 PostScript fonts, it automatically disables the OS X system versions of the fonts. When you turn off the T1 PS fonts in Suitcase's interface, the system fonts are turned back on.

If you don't really want to trust an automatic system, then follow the steps in my article to remove the backup versions of Helvetica from the deeply buried ProtectedFonts folder. Once you've done that, then:

1) Copy Helvetica.dfont and HelveticaNeue.dfont from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder to a new location. It doesn't matter where, other than not to another one of the Fonts folders. You could create a folder at the root of thedrive named "System Helvetica fonts" and put them in there. Once you have the copies in place, delete those fonts from the System folder.

2) Create a second folder next to the first for your Type 1 PostScript fonts and aptly name that folder.

3) Using Suitcase Fusion as an example, now drag and drop those two folders onto the Font Library heading. Two sets will be created with the same names as each folder. Personally, I always use Suitcase with the preference to Add fonts leaving them in place. I've never seen a real purpose for adding all fonts you install to a separate Vault database.

4) You now have the system and T1 PS fonts in their own sets and can turn them on and off manually as needed. Turn the system fonts off and the T1 PS fonts on when required for your client work, and reverse which is on/off otherwise.

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Right now Im trying to get this to work on a clean system with no font management.

The clean install should certainly fix any odd issues. I personally won't ever install a new OS over an old one. I always set up a new OS completely from scratch on a separate partition and then move to that OS for day to day use once I'm convinced everything is working as it should, and the initial point oh bugs have been eliminated. I just moved to Yosemite from Mavericks after the 10.10.2 update. Too many known (though not tragic) issues before that.

I've never been impressed with Font Agent Pro. It's just weird how it tries to manage the system fonts, and is likely the cause of your issues trying to manage between the two Helvetica versions. It's a very good font manager otherwise, but I generally won't recommend it. Give me Suitcase Fusion or FontExplorer X Pro any day ahead of any other font manager.

You will need some way to turn one set of Helvetica fonts on and off. So you still have to remove the Helvetica fonts from the ProtectedFonts folder, and then from the System folder. It's the only way to fully control the two, other than letting Suitcase Fusion automatically handle that chore. Well, either that or manually dragging folders of each set of fonts in and out of the user or main Library Fonts folder. But that gets old really fast.

Once you've finished installing OS X and your apps, set up a folder for the OS X supplied Helvetica fonts, and another for the T1 PS fonts as I described above. You can use Font Book instead of Font Agent Pro to handle which version you want on. And quite honestly, as weak as Font Book is, I'd still use that ahead of Font Agent Pro. Make sure with Font Book that you create the font sets as Library Sets so none of the fonts you add get copied to your user account Fonts folder. Which is what it will do otherwise. A Library Set activates fonts "in place". Once you create your separate system and T1 PS Helvetica font set folders in Font Book, then add the appropriate fonts to each one. You can then manually activate and deactivate them in the same manner as Suitcase.

As to your steps above, it isn't necessary to do 8. Don't put any of the fonts you're trying to control in any standard Fonts folder, as you have outlined as step 11. You want to set up full manual control. That's more difficult to do when the fonts are in a folder OS X considers to be in its control.

First, as these systems will be solely for outputting production files, I don't really see the need to manually switch back and forth between the system Helvetica and the PS Helvetica. Im content to just remove the System one from the picture and live with it, as long as it does not get in the way of our production files.

Ah. Yes, that should be okay. Since that station sounds like it will be used for only specific apps, it won't matter. There will be OS X supplied apps that won't launch if the system versions of Helvetica are missing, but are highly unlikely to matter. As you note, just remove the OS X supplied versions of Helvetica and install the Type 1 PostScript versions.

If I can get Quark or Indesign to see the other fonts with Helvetica Neue removed, I'll be happy and move on from there.

They definitely should. I've run all of our Macs setup to switch the system Helvetica fonts with the T1 PS versions from Panther through current with every version of the Adobe apps available during those times. They have always worked as expected.

Hmm. The only thing I can think of is you aren't putting the entire Type 1 PostScript set into the Fonts folder. Sorry if this is something you already know, but just to reiterate:

Type 1 PostScript fonts are a set. One file is a suitcase containing all of the low res bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts. As an example, here's Adobe Garamond.

Adobe Garamond

AGarBol

AGarBolIta

AGarIta

AGarReg

AGarSem

AGarSemIta

The first file which I highlighted in green is the font suitcase of bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts.

1) The files for a Type 1 PostScript font must have both the screen and printer fonts for a given set in order to work. They also must be in the same folder.

2) The suitcase of bitmap fonts will work alone, but output will be terrible since the system will print the fonts using the 72 dpi screen fonts in the suitcase if the outline portions are missing.

3) Having only the outline fonts will not work. You will get exactly what you are having problems with. You can see the fonts, but they will not load. That's not a problem with Font Book, Suitcase or other font manager. None of them, nor the system itself will load outline fonts from a Type 1 PostScript font without the matching suitcase of screen fonts present.

The full Type 1 PostScript sets of Helvetica from Adobe should have these items. (Suitcase) isn't part of the file name below for those items. I'm just noting it's the name of the suitcase for that font set.

Helvetica

Helve

HelveBol

HelveBolObl

HelveObl

Helvetica (suitcase)

Helvetica Neue 1

HelveNeuBla

HelveNeuBlaIta

HelveNeuUltLig

HelveNeuUltLigIta

Helvetica Neue 1 (suitcase)

Helvetica Neue 2

HelveNeuBol

HelveNeuBolIta

HelveNeuIta

HelveNeuRom

HelveNeuThi

HelveNeuThiIta

Helvetica Neue 2 (suitcase)

Helvetica Neue 3

HelveNeuHea

HelveNeuHeaIta

HelveNeuLig

HelveNeuLigIta

HelveNeuMed

HelveNeuMedIta

Helvetica Neue 3 (suitcase)

Oh, OpenType. I had mentioned Type 1 PostScript a few times earlier and you didn't correct me, so I figured that's what we were working with.

That is very bizarre, then. There's no reason I can think of why it's not working with all apps. Why TextEdit and nothing else?

A bit of an "out there" suggestion. The Adobe apps (CS5, CS5.5 and CS6 in particular for some reason) wreck the OS on some systems when they are installed. The solution is to reinstall the OS right after installing the Adobe suites. Even if you had just installed the OS from scratch on an erased drive.