Comments on: Removing Nonessential System Fonts in Leopard

By: Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:55:13 +0000

I’m using Snow Leopard and was having trouble with conflict between the Helvetica Neue system font and the Helvetica Neue fonts in my InDesign magazine templates. As so many people are using these templates replacing the font with a LT was really not an option, so I needed to find a solution. I pasted a copy of the Helvetica Neue fonts directly into the fonts folder in the InDesign folder in Applications. Now at least I can see the fonts correctly without replacing them every time! Hopefully this will work for printing and everything else too…

By: Sally

Sally — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:24:24 +0000

GIDDYUP? Anyone know how to get this and other annoying fonts COMPLETELY OUT OF InDesign?

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:41:46 +0000

@Patti: Check out some of the suggestions in this post.

By: Patti

Patti — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:20:43 +0000

Please can anyone help with my font torture?

I am unable to use Helvetica Neue Roman (which I just bought) in Illustrator and InDesign CS4. I am using Leopord.

I have followed the suggestions of deleting the inherent Apple Helvetica Neue system fonts (from both places.) That done, I then loaded the new Helvetica Neue Roman font named “HelveNeuRoman” no suffix, postscript Type 1 outline font into my fonts folder in my library- not the system folder library. I restarted the computer and was unable to see the font I had just loaded. Tried loading it into the system fonts folder and the user fonts folder–nothing works.

Any ideas?

By: Michael MacFall

Michael MacFall — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:18:21 +0000

In our situation, we needed to be able to use the full Postscript library of Helvetica Neue, due to way too much existing work. Up until now, I had removed the dfont version completely, and had the Postscript version loaded with the system fonts. Unfortunately, this breaks the latest iPhoto, where nothing shows on launch. By placing the dfont file where Andy indicated above, it works as expected. Funny thing is, it looks like it is actually using the PS version as the baseline is shifted up (like in Dashboard’s calendar). The dfont version does not show up as activated in FontExplorer either.

Hey, it works for me…

By: Andy Tough

Andy Tough — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:56:37 +0000

Regarding the iPhoto problem, I found the following worked:
1. Ensure iPhoto is not running.
2. Select the iPhoto application and ‘right click’ on it. Select ‘Show Package Contents’.
3. Navigate to ‘iPhoto/Contents/Resources/Fonts’.
4. Put a copy of Apple’s Helvetica Neue in this folder.
5. Possibly optional step – restart your computer.

This worked using 10.5.6. and iPhoto 8.0.1.
I never normally use iPhoto so it may be that other problems I am unaware of will manifest themselves in iPhoto if you do this. I hope not!

By: Giovanni

Giovanni — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:07:43 +0000

Has anyone tried this method to get around the Helvetica and Helvetica Neue issue. I’m on OS X 10.4 and have been tackling this issue with Helvetica since OS X 10.2 days this way. It’s a bit of non-technical left field approach but works really well. Not the best for Pro-production work around but great for everyone else.

Using OS9, don’t let this through you off, it’s my only means of opening up a font suitcase that contains the individual font weights. Before you start though make a copy of the entire Helvetica font family including printer fonts and name the font folder with a different name like Helvetica Without for example.

Open the suitcase copy, by double click on it, and remove/deleting the conflicting font weights (ie. Helvetica Roman, Helvetica Bold, etc) but only the conflicting weights. Also remove/delete the matching postscript printer font as well.

Use the modified Helvetica “Without” version to load into your font manager or into one of the many font folders, but not the System/Library/Fonts folder. You will find the modified Helvetica font family will no longer conflict with systems Helvetica and you will have a complete font set.

A friend of mine just upgraded to OS X 10.5.2 and I have solved her issue this way for Helvetica Neue and she reports that all is running well.

Small note: if you were to supply this font, not that legally you should be, must remember to include the postscript version, but being Helvetica or Helvetica Neue most prepress organizations will substitute their own version for your one anyway. Also there are a few OS X applications our there that will open font suitcases but I don’t own any.

By: Jochen Uebel

Jochen Uebel — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:50:55 +0000

… and to all those who are using Suitcase et.al.: Stop it. Manage your fonts by hand instead, using your User > Library > Fonts (and Fonts_deactivated) folder. And everything is working fine. Suitcase, Font Explorer et.al. will always have their own memory which fonts are out there in the system and which not: and this memory will always be different from the memory the system has.

Radical statement No. 2 …

By: Jochen Uebel

Jochen Uebel — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:46:59 +0000

My statement is radical:

It is useless to clean the world of fonts by trying to clean Apples policy. There are already too many Helveticas and Times versions out there. You can’t put them back into the bottle again.

If all designers would tell their clients instead not to use those fonts at all – or to use a copied/converted version with a new name – then 90 percent of all those problems would be gone.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:35:53 +0000

Like Josh, Dan, and Brandon, I have followed this fix to the letter and am still getting error messages when I activate Helvetica or Helvetica Neue in Suitcase. Then, as a result, fonts in Firefox and Leopard all go haywire. Help! This fix doesn’t seem to be working.

(And, yes, this conflict doesn’t always affect InDesign, but I need to use a web browser to get much of the information and assets that I need when I work in InDesign. )