Helvetica™ Std

This document contains late-breaking product information, updates, and troubleshooting tips.

Minimum system requirements
Font installation
Family information
Release Notes
Known issues
Customer care
Other resources

Minimum system requirements

Windows®

Intel® Pentium,® Intel Centrino,® Intel Xeon,® or Intel Core™ Duo processor
Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Vista™
16 MB of RAM (32 MB recommended)
Note: Fonts from Font Folio 11 may also be installed under Microsoft Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, and Windows NT® 4.0 with Service Pack 4 if you install Adobe Type Manager® (ATM™) Light 4.1 on your system. If using a PostScript® printer on Windows 98/ME, AdobePS™ printer driver 4.3 or later is recommended. If using a PostScript printer on Windows NT 4.0, AdobePS printer driver 5.1.2 or later is recommended.

Macintosh

PowerPC® G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor
Mac OS X
16 MB of RAM (32 MB recommended)
If using a PostScript printer, the latest AdobePS printer driver is recommended.
Note: Fonts from Font Folio 11 may be installed under Mac OS 8.6 through 9.2 with ATM Light 4.6, and under Classic mode in Mac OS X with ATM Light 4.6.2.

Font installation

For information on installing these fonts, see http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_fontinstall_en.

Helvetica is one of the most popular typefaces of all time. It was designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 for the Haas foundry of Switzerland (the name is derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland). The design is based on the grotesques of the late nineteenth century, but new refinements put it in the sans serif sub-category of neo-grotesque. Shortly after its introduction, the Stempel foundry purchased the original Helvetica typeface and developed a full series of weights. In the 1960s Helvetica came to the United States, where alignment standards differed; Mergenthaler Linotype copied the Stempel series and then added several new versions of the design. Helvetica is an all-purpose type design that can deliver practically any message clearly and efficiently. The condensed and compressed Helvetica designs are excellent for display applications such as newspaper or newsletter headlines, billboards, and advertising.

Menu Names And Style Linking

In many Windows® applications, instead of every font appearing on the menu, fonts are grouped into style-linked sets, and only the name of the base style font for a set is shown in the menu. The italic and the bold weight fonts of the set (if any) are not shown in the font menu, but can still be accessed by selecting the base style font, and then using the italic and bold style buttons. In this family, such programs will show only the following base style font names in the menu:

Helvetica LT Std
Helvetica LT Std Black
Helvetica LT Std Compressed
Helvetica LT Std Cond
Helvetica LT Std Cond Blk
Helvetica LT Std Cond Light
Helvetica LT Std ExtCompressed
Helvetica LT Std Fractions
Helvetica LT Std Light
Helvetica LT Std UltCompressed

The other fonts in this family must be selected by choosing a menu name and then a style option following the guide below.

Menu Name	plus Style Option...	selects this font
Helvetica LT Std	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Roman
Helvetica LT Std	Italic	Helvetica LT Std Oblique
Helvetica LT Std	Bold	Helvetica LT Std Bold
Helvetica LT Std	Bold, Italic	Helvetica LT Std Bold Oblique

Helvetica LT Std Black	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Black
Helvetica LT Std Black	Italic	Helvetica LT Std Black Oblique

Helvetica LT Std Compressed	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Compressed

Helvetica LT Std Cond	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Condensed
Helvetica LT Std Cond	Italic	Helvetica LT Std Condensed Oblique
Helvetica LT Std Cond	Bold	Helvetica LT Std Bold Condensed
Helvetica LT Std Cond	Bold, Italic	Helvetica LT Std Bold Condensed Oblique

Helvetica LT Std Cond Blk	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Black Condensed
Helvetica LT Std Cond Blk	Italic	Helvetica LT Std Black Condensed Oblique

Helvetica LT Std Cond Light	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Light Condensed
Helvetica LT Std Cond Light	Italic	Helvetica LT Std Light Condensed Oblique

Helvetica LT Std ExtCompressed	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Extra Compressed

Helvetica LT Std Fractions	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Fractions
Helvetica LT Std Fractions	Bold	Helvetica LT Std Fractions Bold

Helvetica LT Std Light	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Light
Helvetica LT Std Light	Italic	Helvetica LT Std Light Oblique

Helvetica LT Std UltCompressed	[none]	Helvetica LT Std Ultra Compressed

On the Mac OS, although each font appears as a separate entry on the font menu, users may also select fonts by means of style links. Selecting a base style font and then using the style links (as described above for Windows) enhances cross-platform document compatibility with many applications, such as Microsoft® Word and Adobe PageMaker®, although it is unnecessary with more sophisticated Adobe applications such as recent versions of Illustrator®, Photoshop® or InDesign®.

One should not, however, select a base font which has no style-linked variant, and then use the bold or italic styling button. Doing so will either have no effect, or result in programmatic bolding or slanting of the base font, which will usually produce inferior screen and print results.

Release Notes

For all fonts of family Helvetica LT Std: version 2.124 created on Wed Mar 23 16:05:34 2011.

version 2.124 created 2011/03/23

Added code at end of name ID 3 'Unique Name' to indicate licensing foundry.
Remove deprecated ForceBold keyword from CFF table.
Update OS/2 table to version 4: add WPF names name ID 21 and 22 to name table, if needed.

version 2.094 created 2010/08/12

Rebuilt the fonts using makeotf's -addn option to generate a marking notdef glyph.

version 2.093 created 2010/08/06

Added 5 glyphs (uni0400, uni0450, uni040D, uni045D, uni20B4) to 4 fonts (Roman, Obl, Bold, BoldObl) to bring them up to Adobe Cyrillic 1.
Added kerning pairs for some of these glyphs.

version 2.092 created 2009/11/23

Corrected font menu names in name table for Mac platform names. Name
ID's 1,2 16 and 17 are now written following the same rules as the
Windows platform names. Previous releases put the Preferred Name
and Style in Mac platform name ID 1 and 2, and did not write name ID
16 and 17, for legacy issues with old Mac OS versions.

version 2.082 created 2009/07/28

Added Windows platform name ID 8 - Manufacturer.

version 2.030 created 2007/09/12

Release for FontFolio 11
Added 'ordn' reference to 'aalt'.
Removed majuscule substitutions from 'ordn'.
Removed substitutions from majuscule letters to minuscle, superior letters.
Removed majuscule substitutions from 'sups'.
Removed substitutions from majuscule letters to minuscle, superior letters.
Added superior alternates for lowercase a and o.
Added glyphs: a.superior as duplicate of ordfeminine; o.superior as duplicate of ordmasculine.
Changed substitutions in 'ordn' and 'sups' from ordinals to these new alternates.
Added superior alternates for numbers.
Added glyphs: one.superior, two.superior, three.superior as duplicates of onesuperior, twosuperior, threesuperior.
Changed substitutions in 'sups' to use new alternates.
Added legacy superior numbers.
Added glyphs: onesuperior, twosuperior, threesuperior as duplicates of one.superior, two.superior, three.superior.
Simplified 'ordn' feature.
Removed contextual rules from 'ordn' feature. Simplified substitutions.
Added f-ligatures for use in 'liga' feature.
Added glyphs: f_i as duplicate of fi; f_l as duplicate of fl.
Changed substitutions in 'liga' to use these new ligatures.
Add new glyphs to appropriate kern classes.
Removed 'liga' substitutions where no visible change results.
Standard f-ligatures are equivalent to their constituent letters; ligature substitutions for them were removed.
Renamed f-ligatures and removed 'clig' feature.
Standard f-ligatures are equivalent to their constituent letters, and were named "f_i" and "f_l". The 'clig' feature was removed, and glyphs were renamed "fi" and "fl".
Removed Turkish language lookup from 'liga' feature.
Font character set does not support Turkish, so language exceptions for ligatures are not necessary.
Also, Turkish language feature coverage was not properly specified anyway.
Added uni2215 (divisionslash) to 'slash' context in 'frac' feature.
Removed numero glyph from 'ordn' feature.
The 'ordn' feature contained a ligature substitution, N+o->numero. This was removed.
Renamed litre glyph "afii61289" to "uni2113".
Changed Cyrillic glyph names.
Cyrillic glyphs which had names beginning with "afii" now have names beginning with "uni", conveying their Unicode value.
Added 'locl' for Serbian alternate.
Added a 'locl' feature with a substitution for a Serbian language alternate: Substitute uni0431 (be) for uni0431.ital. Added 'locl' feature to 'aalt'. Added language system coverage for Cyrillic/Serbian.
Added 'locl' for Serbian alternates.
Added a 'locl' feature with substitutions for Serbian language alternates: Substitute uni0431 (be) for uni0431.ital; uni0433 (ghe) for uni0433.ital; uni0434 (de) for uni0434.ital; uni043F (pe) for uni043F; uni0442 (te) for uni0442.ital. Added 'locl' feature to 'aalt'. Added language system coverage for Cyrillic/Serbian.
Changed names of composite accent glyphs.
Certain glyph are combinations of two accent characters, but had ligature-like names which were constructed as a space and two combining accent characters (e.g. "space_uni0308_uni0301"). Such glyphs were renamed as a spacing accent character combined with a combining accent (e.g. "dieresis_acutecomb").
Changed glyph names from "uni" to AGL.
Some glyph names were changed from "uni" names to equivalent "friendly" AGL names, e.g. "uni002E" to "period". The Unicode mapping remains the same.
Updated legal notices (trademark and copyright) for accuracy. Amended, changed and deleted as necessary. Ensured 'Notice' field in CFF fontinfo dictionary is the union of copyright and trademark notices in OTF 'name' table.
Added uni2010 (hyphen2).
Added 'size' feature containing a design size value.
Add default language system.
OpenType language system coverage for script 'dflt' and language 'DFLT' was added.
Replaced Latin accented glyphs.
Existing accented, Latin glyphs were using synthetic oblique letters. These glyphs were replaced with those generated from the existing, non-accented letters, which are true "designed" obliques -- not synthetic.

version 1.040 created 2002/10/18

First release as OpenType.

Known issues

Some glyphs in the font cannot be accessed unless you are using an OpenType-savvy application.

Customer care

Customer Service
Adobe Customer Service provides assistance with product information, sales, registration, and other non-technical issues. To find out how to contact Adobe Customer Service, please visit Adobe.com for your region or country and click on Contact.

Support Plan Options and Technical Resources
If you require technical assistance for your product, including information on free and paid support options and troubleshooting resources, more information is available at http://www.adobe.com/go/support/. Outside of North America, go to http://www.adobe.com/go/intlsupport/. Free troubleshooting resources include Adobe’s support knowledgebase, Adobe user-to-user forums and more.

Other resources

Online Resources
Adobe Type Showroom
Adobe Type Showroom - all current Read-Me files for our font families
User Forums