[pdftex] fonts

[Ingele Roelens]

Dear all,
I a drowning in the information about fonts, font files and encoding tables. I just want to have my thesis in helvetica instead of times. Using the packages helvet and pslatex together gives me a pdf document in times new roman. Using only helvet gives me 'CMBX' as original font and embedded subset, type 1 as actual font (in acrobat reader, File, document properties, fonts...). Is this then helvetica? 
As far as I can see, all needed files are dispersed in the miktex tree on my computer, there are phvr8r.tfm  and .other files present. 
I find all information rather confusing, I am not at all used to different fonts. This is the only thing that's easier in Word (I spent the whole afternoon on it).

Thank you for any possible information, 
Ingele Roelens


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