Helvetica Neue embedding problems

Fonts are always a bit tricky to deal with. There are a bunch of ways to embed fonts in the IDE on the stage, through the library, in Flex, in runtime etc. none of which are perfect. One problem I ran into the other day was in using Helvetica Neue. This font is probably the most popular, and so it is used extensively. It’s so popular that there is a documentary film about it (http://www.helveticafilm.com/), but more impotently, the new Mac OS Leopard (and Snow Leopard) now uses Helvetica Neue as one of it’s display fonts, which means that unless you are very crafty, you are going to have to use the pre-installed system font, rather than the adobe package of the same name.

This is somewhat aggravating because it makes it hard to use the different faces (Light, UltraLight, LightCondensed etc.). After a few hours of research though, I found that there are a few options you can resort to:

1) keep it simple.
You can activate (whether you’re using Suitcase, FontBook or some other Font management program) only the NON-SYSTEM fonts. For the package I have, that means that I can activate the whole package except for:

HelveticaNeue-Bold, HelveticaNeue-BoldItalic, HelveticaNeue-Italic, HelveticaNeue-Light, HelveticaNeue-LightItalic and HelveticaNeue-UltraLight.

Then, when you embed the fonts in Flash (I use the IDE for that) the names can be quite confusing. the best solution is to create a dynamic textField on the stage, give it an instance name trace out the name of the font, like this:

2. Replace the system font.
If you have a font package with a .dfont extension, you can replace the existing system font with your advanced font — the system should treat it right as long as it has the same name. you can read more about it here: http://www.fontgeek.net/blog/?p=253.

3. Use a different version
Linotype offers a version of Helvetica Neue that doesn’t conflict with the system font because it has a slightly different name. You can find that package here: http://www.linotype.com/1266/neuehelvetica-family.html?gclid=CPPViZj8g50CFQhV2godCA44bA