On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 23:28:34 -0600 Daniel O'Donnell daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca wrote:
So how does one know if a specific character is a) present on my system or b) commonly or rarely found in fonts? There are several free tools and techniques you can use (these are windows based tools: I'd be interested in hearing about linux or mac based ones).
For Mac (OS 10.3, Panther), the Unicode Block display of the system's character palette performs both of these functions. If your system has a font that contains a glyph in a specific category (say, Runic Letter Y, under Runic), that character will display as present (if not, an empty box appears). Clicking on a character shown to be present then opens all the individual font presentations (including bold, italic, etc.) of that character in a window below; so if you have three fonts that contain Runic Letter Y, you can know this instantly, and see what they each look like, and then choose to insert one into your current application. To compliment a "pan-Unicode" approach, the Glyph Catalog feature allows you to examine individual font offerings, displaying all characters available in a specific font.
Unless I'm missing something, there does seem to be some wonkiness with this feature and Junicode, however. The Glyph Catalog (which allows you to examine all characters available in a specific font) indicates that the Junicode runes are only available in Junicode Bold. The Unicode Block feature indicates only Junicode Regular contains these characters, but displays them (as I mentioned in another post) incorrectly as vertical lines.
best,
~ Martin Foys
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin K. Foys Assistant Professor Department of English Hood College Frederick, MD 21701
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