Leopard, Helvetica, and InDesign
If you are an Adobe Indesign layout artist who has upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard, you have likely experienced a problem or two with Helvetica. We had some warning before we went into this that Helvetica was to become a system font in Leopard. That means that the operating system is going to take it pretty seriously. There is no getting rid of it or changing versions of it.
The problem is that default Helvetica isn’t really suitable for real print work. HelveticaNeue is a great font, and even that is subject to whining by the operating system. If you are a Suitcase user, you will see OS X spit a slew of warnings at you if you go to activate your HelveticaNeue fonts. Fortunately, you can OK through them all and generally do your work without problems. You will notice a few things get screwed up. For example, your iCal icon will start using HelveticaNeue and look screwed up. Small price to pay to get your documents done.
The long term solution is to just stop using HelveticaNeue. That doesn’t mean that you have to give up the Helvetica family forever, you are just going to have to buy the new Helvetica LT OpenType font from Adobe. OpenType fonts are pretty sweet, and this is a great family, so our advice is just buy it, start using it, be error-free, and be happy.
This problem isn’t specific to any particular version of InDesign (CS, CS2, or CS3). It’s a font issue that occurs when updating to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard.
