Remove OS X System Helvetica TTF -- really a good idea?

[envelope_the_frontcat@adobeforums.com]

Somewhere I saw a recommendation to make IllustratorCS work more reliably by removing the Helvetica TTF files from the OS X System and installing good old reliable Adobe PostScript Type 1 Helvetica. OK, I did that. Only problem is, I get thousands of error messages now in my Console saying Helvetica not found. And yes, I'm using Font Reserve to manage all my thousands of fonts. So, was the recommendation that you install Type 1 Helvetica into the System fonts area and not use a font manager for Helvetica since many applications apparently try for the System location and ignore Font Reserve? Or generate errors before Font Reserve gets its act into gear?

The console thing doesn't bother me that much, but I'm concerned it is slowing my system down to have thousands of errors logged all the time. It seems like my system is slower during startup than before by a factor of 3. I've watched the CPU monitor during the 5 minutes it takes my system to settle down after logging in, and Font Reserve is using 100% of a CPU for most of those minutes. I guess having thousands of fonts is not all its knocked up to be.

e

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Install it in place of the System Fonts as Font reserve loads after the system loads and a lot of other things as well.

Also I believe that since Extsensis took over Font Reserve it is working much better so if you haven't update.

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

Is this true, by the way? Are people getting "more reliable" performance when they
replace the Helvetica .dfont with a Type 1 version? I have not and am not having
trouble with OSX 10.2.8. But then again, one never knows if things could be even
better unless one does what's necessary to make them so....

[Stitzlein@adobeforums.com]

Mail wil not launch without Helvetica.dfont in my experience under Jaguar, can't speak for Panther.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

By having the Adobe Type 1 or open font there instead of the TT version you will have Roman and Bold and Italic for them available in T1 or Open otherwise you will have the TT.

The only reason to do it otherwise leave your system as is.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

In Panther, none of the Apple apps are tied to a specific version of Helvetica or Helvetica Neue. PostScript Type 1 works just fine. (In some versions of Jaguar that wasn't necessarily true.)

[Stitzlein@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Steve, good to know.

[envelope_the_frontcat@adobeforums.com]

I pushed type 1 Helvetica into /Library/Fonts and rebooted, and success-- no more zillions of error msgs.

BTW, I had no applications fail during the month or two that I ran with no Helvetica in a traditional system location (i.e. but available as a result of being in FontReserve's database).

thanks for the advice!

e

[Gloria_Chen@adobeforums.com]

I have taken out Helvetica TT out of System Folder and all other folders. We are solely managing fonts through Font Reserve 3.1.3 on Panther running on G5 machine. We have not encounter any problem just yet with this set up. Helvetica and Verdana are permanently loaded at system startup. We are a printing company, so we are turning on and off fonts all day and it is a better configuration not to have any fonts in any of the system folders to cause conflicts.

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

What's with this TT? I thought OSX shipped with .dfonts, not TT. I'm on 10.2.8.
Did Panther switch to TrueType?

[Gloria_Chen@adobeforums.com]

Sorry, I do mean .dfonts.

[Gloria_Chen@adobeforums.com]

Let me try to clarify (the word here is try). We removed all fonts from all font folders inside all libraries, be it .dfont, TT, or otf, except for the ones the system needs to run. Font Reserve has a feature to do this for you. And yes, Mail will not run without Helvetica, and Safari seems to need Verdana, so we have Helvetica Family Type 1 font and Verdana TT font loaded permanently at system startup within Font Reserve. From there, Font Reserve takes over and activates fonts as we need them (Although, we are still waiting for InDesign CS Plug-In from Font Reserve). No, Panther still uses .dfont, but as we install programs, they come with various different formats. So to decrease conflicts we manage fonts by having a central location that all users can access and therefore we are all using the same versions.

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

Gloria, I understand. Was just trying to figure out why folks on this thread are
referring to TT in the OSX/System/Library/Fonts folder when (at least in Jaguar)
the fonts there are .dfonts. Wondered if Panther had made a change (I don't
have Panther so wouldn't know on my own.)

[Stitzlein@adobeforums.com]

Because dfonts are a new version of Truetype that is proprietary to OSX.

[Michael_Gianino@adobeforums.com]

I have not been to school for this stuff, and fonts has always been a mysterious subject for me, so don't mistake me for an expert.

In OS9 and before, I always favored PostScript fonts to Truetype, because PostScript was the language that laser printers and RIPs used to get info from the computer. I have read that OpenType fonts are a more closely related to Truetype technology than they are to PostScript, and that PDF is supposed to "replace" PostScript as the default/industry-standard for printer communication. Please correct me if these are wrong.

That being said, I believe that Truetype fonts are still usable on OSX, (I still use OS9) along with PostScript and OpenType. Doug's question about Panther "changing" from .dfonts would bring up two questions: 1-is Panther abandning .dfonts, or 2-is Panther keeping .dfont compatibility but making TrueType the standard. I don't think either is probably the case, and I get the impression that Doug would agree.

So, I guess we are left with the fact that certain fonts are necessary for certain programs, just like in OS9. I activate Arial and TimesNewRoman, both TrueType, for Internet Explorer, but I don't use them for print work. Maybe some real font experts would care to throw their 2¢ into this discussion.

[Mark_Douma@adobeforums.com]

"Was just trying to figure out why folks on this thread are referring
to TT in the OSX/System/Library/Fonts folder when (at least in Jaguar)
the fonts there are .dfonts."




OS X .dfonts are TrueType fonts--Datafork TrueType fonts.

They're basically identical to "OS 9-style" TrueType fonts except for the fact that their information is stored in the data fork rather than the resource fork.

Every version of OS X I'm aware of (all the way back to the Public Beta) has shipped with fonts from Apple that are in the .dfont format. Other multi-lingual fonts are usually included as well, in either .dfont format, OpenType format (.otf), or Windows TrueType format (.ttf). Usually, any "OS 9-style" TrueType fonts that are included are from Microsoft to go along with Internet Explorer.

Yes, either form of Mac TrueType, whether "OS 9-style" resource-fork-based TrueType, or "OS X-style" .dfont data-fork-based TrueType, will work just fine in OS X.

I've written an AppleScript-based application, dfontifier <http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/dfont/dfont.html>, to convert between the 2 formats, since Apple's own program to do this, ForkSwitcher <http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/ForkSwitcher.html>, crashed under normal use and is no longer available.

Any halfway-decent program would never hard-code the path to a font which sounds like what the original problem may have been. For example, I know the VLC video player has the path to Lucida Grande ( /System/Library/Fonts/LucidaGrande.dfont ) hard coded in the application itself, and would complain if it couldn't find the font there.

Hope this helps....

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

This is why I think this is an Apple OS problem because of the crazy things Apple has done with OS X to try to control what the user does and does not do to make them more dependent on not only Apple Hardware but Apple software and even eventually the fonts you can load on the system. Of course they will continue to get sued for
this policy.

[Ann_Shelbourne@adobeforums.com]

I simply pruned my System/Library/Fonts folder and exchanged any .dfonts that were in there with either Type 1s or with OTFs of the same named typeface. Replaced fonts include: Helvetica, Times, Symbol and Zapf Dingbats.

Then I removed most of the Microsoft TT fonts from Library/Fonts to a different folder so that they could be managed solely by FontAgent Pro. and left only the basic Web fonts (Verdana, Arial, Apple Symbols, Courier New and Webdings) in there.

My FAP start-up set includes the OTF versions of Times NewRoman and Helvetica Neue which are fonts that MS Office, IE and certain Apple applications seem to demand.

This line-up has proved to be trouble-free.

[Michael_Gianino@adobeforums.com]

Shows you what I know…I thought .dfont was another name for OpenType. Obviously I still work in OS9, but one thing that always bugged me about TrueType and PostScript fonts was the warning I got from ATM Deluxe that read something like: This TrueType font refrences PostScript fonts or something like that. That leads me to think that you shouldn't have PS and TT versions of the same font active at the same time. Why then, did Apple put PS and TT fonts in the same suitcase in the system that loads when you install the OS onto your computer? Sorry if this is a bit basic to the techies, but a good reading recommendation on fonts would be welcomed. I did read a font FAQ that I found on the internet, but most of it was written in the early 90s.

[Ann_Shelbourne@adobeforums.com]

<< Why then, did Apple put PS and TT fonts in the same suitcase in the system that loads when you install the OS onto your computer? >>

I don't know why they did it but when I used 9.2.2, I always dumped all of Apple's fonts except for the "City-named" ones; put my Type 1 versions of Symbol and Zapf Dingbats in the System font folder plus Adobe Sans and Adobe Serif and managed everything else through ATM DLX.