Helvetica Neue problems

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Level 1

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Helvetica Neue problems

The problem:
The numbers on my calendar widget started to look like gibberish:
http://www.danawyn.com/test/font_calendar.png
..and some websites, too!

By looking at the system fonts using FontExplorerX, I realized the problem is Helvetica Neue, particularly Helvetica Neue Bold:
http://www.danawyn.com/test/font_fex.png

(Notice how the bold weight displays the sample a–z text as caps, punctuation, and some lowercase letters.)

What I've done so far:
I've read Kurt Lang's article on font management, and made sure that fonts are where they are supposed to be. I have deleted other versions of HelveticaNeue that I use for design. I have also deleted HelveticaNeue.dfont and replaced it with one I copied from a different computer.

None of these solved the problem. But here's what I've found out:

• Fontbook says there is a duplicate Bold weight. Deactivating the duplicate weight (via Fontbook or FontExplorer X) does not solve the problem, and I have not been able to locate where in the system the duplicate weight is.

• The gibberish characters do not show up when I view the font in Fontbook.

• The font panel in TextEdit shows two additional weights in Helvetica Neue (Helvetica 55 Roman and Helvetica 75 Bold) that do not show up in Fontbook or FontExplorer X. It is those two particular weights that show up as gibberish.
http://www.danawyn.com/test/font_textedit.png

• Activating the problematic bold weight in FontExplorerX causes the Helvetica 75 Bold weight in TextEdit to become simply "Bold," and thus two weights named "Bold" show up in TextEdit's font panel, both of which show up as gibberish.
http://www.danawyn.com/test/fontfexactive.png

This is all pretty strange to me, as the .dfont Helvetica Neue and the other versions I use for design have never caused any problems. I realized it only suddenly, when I checked the calendar and a website.

iMac Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on May 15, 2007 12:12 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

May 15, 2007 12:30 PM in response to DChen

Have you tried cleaning your font caches? Fontfinagler is good for this (use google to find it).

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Answer 2

Mo-kat

Level 1

0 points

May 15, 2007 7:59 PM in response to DChen

Hello, DChen!

I have just had the exact same problem and took two months to get to the answer. Kurt Lang's article is excellent, MOSTLY the section Font 911 , the second Q and A, is what will fix your problem. I had done this by trial and error, and when I saw it in K. L.'s article it confirmed it exactly.

Two fonts, Helvetica Fraction and Times Phonetic, corrupt, and show up making gibberish on Safari, Help viewers, Thesaurus, stickies etc. Remove them completely from your drive, don't leave them on the drive. I had four files - remove all, the bold, italic, whatever. This will sort it out. Do a general cleanup - ie repair permissions in Disk Utility, perhaps run Font Finangler (as per link on K.L.'s site) or a font cache cleaner - but your problem will be solved.

I've seen a lot of these queries lately and it seems poss that it's a 10.4.9 anomaly, or I think the latest Photoshop update - not sure which. Easily remedied, but not so easy to identify in the first place.

Good luck. By the way my Helvetica Neue was also affected, so my problem seems as if it was identical to yours. Mo-kat.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

May 15, 2007 8:05 PM in response to Mo-kat

Two fonts, Helvetica Fraction and Times Phonetic,
corrupt, and show up making gibberish on Safari, Help
viewers, Thesaurus, stickies etc.

It's hard to see how these particular fonts could have any connection to the kind of gibberish reported above in his calendar. See this page for examples of what they actually do:

http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/garbledfonts_troubleshootingguide.html

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Answer 4

Mo-kat

Level 1

0 points

May 15, 2007 8:17 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hello Tom,

Thanks for this link. I originally identified the problem by copying and pasting the gibberish into Freehand to see which font it was, then out of frustration taking them off my drive, which worked. I'm amazed to see that it's such a universal problem, everyone's having it.

I'll look into this link as I'm an information junkie, thank goodness though, everything is running extremely well since I removed the offenders.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

May 15, 2007 8:34 PM in response to Mo-kat

I'm amazed to see that it's such a universal
problem, everyone's having it.

Of course it only affects those people who have added these fonts to their systems. I've never seen them myself, but I suspect they may be installed by certain Adobe apps. The Fractions and Phonetic fonts are not corrupt, they just put the wrong characters where Latin is supposed to be, and Apple Cocoa apps mistake them for the real Helvetica and Times, especially if they are located in User/Library/Fonts, which has priority. The same thing can happen with Helvetica or Times CYR fonts, but those getting installed seems to be much less common. The problem is not recent but has been around for years, even with 10.2.

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Answer 6

Mo-kat

Level 1

0 points

May 16, 2007 9:08 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi there - great, I have saved them on a flash drive in case I ever need them, good to know they're not corrupt.

This did occur both times my technician had worked on my mac, ostensibly to fix a lesser font clash, so it could have something to do with Adobe updates, it seems - which she did at the time. It certainly causes havoc though!

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Answer 7

DChen Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 13, 2007 10:42 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

It took me a long time (I was super swamped with work), but I finally got around to running Font Finangler, and it worked! No more gibberish in Widgets or websites. Thank you, Tom!

Mo-Kat, thanks also for the heads up for Helvetica Fractions and Times Phonetic.

By the way, since the problem was with Helvetica Neue, a friend said to me, "Just use Akzidenz, and don't bother with Helvetica, since it's the original grotesque." That might not work for some, but it sounds good to me. And I like Akzidenz better anyway.

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