Helvetica gone corrupted on urgent job!

[rosieposie]

I have Helvetica Neue installed on my system but it appears to have gone corrupted. I have been given an urgent job of amending an existing brochure that uses this font, but it displays pixelated like it has gone corrupted. Is there any way of repairing it or perhaps downloading it again for free?

[Pointyhat]

What OS are you using? You may just need to clean your application cache if you're on a Mac. You can do it using Onyx or if your use FEX it's under tools.

[rosieposie]

I'm using OS 10.5.5. What are Onyx and FEX, I've never heard of them before? Should they already be on my system or is it something I have to download?

[Pointyhat]

Hmmmm. Not sure if Onyx works with Leopard. FEX is Linotypes Font Explorer X, it's a font management app. What are you using for font management? And let me guess, are you using Quark?

[rosieposie]

lol, funnily enough I'm not using Quark on this occasion, its illustrator. I use Font Book as font management, I know its not ideal but I couldn't install Suitcase as I only have an old version that wont work on leopard. I have managed to make this job work on this occasion by changing the font, so there's no urgent rush now. I am still interested to know how to repair a damaged font though, particularly one like Helvetica because I seem to remember having problems with this on my last G5 as well.

[Silence04]

^yeah, try linotype font explorer... it's free and you'll probably love it!

[Pointyhat]

You can 1. just try repairing permissions and restarting, or 2. download applejack and clean your font caches with that, or 3. down load Font Explorer and use that, it's been upgraded to 10.5. Hopefully you have all your fonts in one place on the HD and all you do is import. It's free and it rawks!

[rosieposie]

Ok thanks guys, you are fantastic help as usual! I will download font explorer, have just read the reviews and it sounds like its just what I need.

Cheers!

["Technical" Terry]

I had this problem before Linotype released their amazing product. Found out that Swiss 721 is close enough of a match. I now use it in place of Helvetica exclusively.

[urstwile]

There are also issues with Helvetica Neue and Leopard, because of conflicts which Apple created by making their version of Helvetica Neue a required system font. You should be okay if you install Explorer, however, it should use the one used in the document.