Replacing Helvetica with Nimus Sans - glyphs don't substitute

[Graphic Squirrel]

Hello Community.  I am having to replace our Helvetica font and it was suggested that Nimus Sans was a likely substitute for it.  However, when I change the font from one to the other, none of the Nimbus Sans glyphs are substituted, even though I see them in the glyphs panel.  These include the ff and apostrophe.  Obviously I cannot start resetting all of our documents with this happening.  Can anyone give me either a way to force those glyphs to replace the ones they are substituting or suggest a different font that is similar to Helvetica? 

Thanks for any help!  (Using a Windows 10 PC and latest InDesign)

GS

[Scott Falkner]

Are you saying the font is not changing anywhere? How are you changing the font? Can you provide screen captures?

[Graphic Squirrel]

I opened the document, which was converted from the previous version of ID, highlighted the Helvetica font, and clicked on the Nimbus Sans font.  When I did that, the apostrophes and ff's were blocks instead of glyphs.  I checked the entire font set on the glyph palette, and they were available, but they didn't automatically change.  Never seen that happen. 

I decided to use Arial instead, and now I cannot recreate the issue, which is a good thing I guess.  Not as big a fan of Arial, but it will have to do.  Thanks for your reply.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You should change fonts at the style level. Click in any paragraph, edit that style, change the font from Helvetica to Nimbus.

Changing things by selecting text and applying an override (for font, color, size, anything) is very poor practice.

Or did I misunderstand your method?

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[Graphic Squirrel]

LOL - nope, no misunderstanding.  Self taught, and been doing it that way for a very long time.  I like that there are many ways of getting to the same result.  However, since Adobe decided to force us to quit using Type 1 fonts, I am having to reset all of our documents, and I am willing to look for the quickest and most accurate method out there (accuracy being the main point).  If I can do that and save the style to use in other documents, that might be the way to go.  Can you change all of the styles in a document at once?  We have a lot of long documents with multiple text boxes.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If you're not using styles — if you don't have styles applied to every paragraph, with no local overrides (those should be Character Styles, without exception)...

1. You're going to have a long slog updating the type in all your documents.
2. This is the reason you learn and use styles.

Maybe a good time to redo each document correctly, creating appropriate styles and applying them as you update the fonts. The "fingerpainting" method that Word all but encourages is really, really bad practice in professional layout in general and ID in particular.

I suspect if you update the styles and remove overrides, nearly any font you choose will work correctly. There are very few font families that don't have (and correctly map) the basic 200 or so glyphs, including ligatures. You have to get into amateur-made fonts or ones for other languages before you really find missing pieces, in most cases.

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[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

Another nethod for changing fonts that's better than highlighting text (and probably faster than editing styles even when you use them) would be to use Type > Find Font... and make the substitutions there. This will fix ALL instances of the fonts you want to cange in one go per font, and if you check the box to redefine styles it will take care of fixing all of them for you as well.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

True. However, the original problem here is a very odd one, and I'd bet that it traces to spot formatting that is getting in the way of proper font substitution. Not sure this "bare metal" font replacement would get around such flaws in the content, but it's worth trying.

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[Peter Spier]

Good point. I think there's at least one script out there that will remove local overrides en masse, which might help, too.

[Kasyan Servetsky]

Here's the Clear style overrides in InDesign documents script by grefel

[Kasyan Servetsky]

Can you change all of the styles in a document at once?  We have a lot of long documents with multiple text boxes.

By @Graphic Squirrel

Yes, I wrote such a script. It replaces fonts according to the list in the CSV file.
It's not the final version yet: in the process of testing.
If you're interested (and I have time today), I will post it.

[Diane Burns]

We find really full glyph coverage of all kinds using Google Noto fonts, available in serif and sans serif, for many languages, etc. Perhaps give these a try? https://fonts.google.com/noto

[Laubender]

@Graphic Squirrel said: " However, when I change the font from one to the other, none of the Nimbus Sans glyphs are substituted, even though I see them in the glyphs panel."

Ok, this is an odd problem.

Seems that the code points for the glyphs are different in both fonts.

Is the Nimbus Sans activated from Adobe Fonts?

Could you post a sample InDesign document where Helvetica is used?

Maybe the issue is with the used version of the Helvetica? Could be an older one.

I'm also on Windows 10 with the latest InDesign.

FWIW: A forum admin should change the title of this thread from "Nimus Sans" to "Nimbus Sans"…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )