Windows 7 only support partial smart-display of Unicode characters?

[JJ]

I just found out that Windows 7 can only smart-display Unicode characters
partially. This problem doesn't occur on Windows 8 and newer.

I don't know the exact term, but what I meant about smart-displaying Unicode
characters is that no matter which font I use for the GUI (configured from
the "Window Color and Appearance" Control Panel), if the chosen font doesn't
have the needed font glyphs, Windows will automatically use other fonts
which have them.

For example, my GUI font is set to "Microsoft Sans Serif". That font doesn't
have any glyph for Chinese/Japanese/Korean (CJK) characters. Yet, Windows
Explorer can properly display CJK characters which are on file/folder names.

For example, this file name displays the Chinese character properly (create
a new file and rename it to below name):

char實5BE6.txt

However, for characters within the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Unicode block (character 1F300-1F5FF). Below file name has a Fire character
(code point 1F525), but it's displayed as a square in Windows 7, but fine on
Windows 8+:

char��1F525.txt

Depending on your Usenet client and system, the above Fire character may
also be displayed as a square. But the character's code will still be intact
if copied into clipboard then paste it elsewhere.

I've already tried installing all of the Windows 8 fonts into my Windows 7.
Replacing any existing ones. But the character is still displayed as a
square. Deleting the FNTCACHE.DAT and rebooting also doesn't help.

In a clean installation of Windows 7, the only font which has the Fire
character glyph is the "Segoe UI Symbol" font. But even if I change my GUI
font to "Segoe UI Symbol", the character is still displayed as a square.

So, is there a way to work around this problem?

[Mayayana]

"JJ" <***@vfemail.net> wrote

|I just found out that Windows 7 can only smart-display Unicode characters
| partially. This problem doesn't occur on Windows 8 and newer.
|
| I don't know the exact term, but what I meant about smart-displaying
Unicode
| characters is that no matter which font I use for the GUI (configured from
| the "Window Color and Appearance" Control Panel), if the chosen font
doesn't
| have the needed font glyphs, Windows will automatically use other fonts
| which have them.
|
| For example, my GUI font is set to "Microsoft Sans Serif". That font
doesn't
| have any glyph for Chinese/Japanese/Korean (CJK) characters. Yet, Windows
| Explorer can properly display CJK characters which are on file/folder
names.
|
| For example, this file name displays the Chinese character properly
(create
| a new file and rename it to below name):
|
| char?5BE6.txt
|
| However, for characters within the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
| Unicode block (character 1F300-1F5FF). Below file name has a Fire
character
| (code point 1F525), but it's displayed as a square in Windows 7, but fine
on
| Windows 8+:
|
| char??1F525.txt
|
A curious situation. I'm not sure, but I wonder if it's
a UTF-16/UTF-32 mixup. 1F525 is only possible as a
32-bit character code. Your character above comes
through to me as two characters in the "surrogates"
range of UTF-16:

ED A0 BD (D83D)
ED B4 A5 (DD25)

Windows supports those, even in file names, but I
don't know what real purpose they can serve:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/Intl/surrogates-and-supplementary-characters

I don't know what supports UTF-32. I also don't
know how 1F525 came through as what I got.

[JJ]

Post by Mayayana
A curious situation. I'm not sure, but I wonder if it's
a UTF-16/UTF-32 mixup. 1F525 is only possible as a
32-bit character code. Your character above comes
through to me as two characters in the "surrogates"
ED A0 BD (D83D)
ED B4 A5 (DD25)
Windows supports those, even in file names, but I
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/Intl/surrogates-and-supplementary-characters
I don't know what supports UTF-32. I also don't
know how 1F525 came through as what I got.

Yes, the (32-bit) Fire character actually consists of two characters to make
up the 1F525 code point.

[RR]

Post by JJ
I just found out that Windows 7 can only smart-display Unicode characters
partially. This problem doesn't occur on Windows 8 and newer.
I don't know the exact term, but what I meant about smart-displaying Unicode
characters is that no matter which font I use for the GUI (configured from
the "Window Color and Appearance" Control Panel), if the chosen font doesn't
have the needed font glyphs, Windows will automatically use other fonts
which have them.
For example, my GUI font is set to "Microsoft Sans Serif". That font doesn't
have any glyph for Chinese/Japanese/Korean (CJK) characters. Yet, Windows
Explorer can properly display CJK characters which are on file/folder names.
For example, this file name displays the Chinese character properly (create
char實5BE6.txt
However, for characters within the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Unicode block (character 1F300-1F5FF). Below file name has a Fire character
(code point 1F525), but it's displayed as a square in Windows 7, but fine on
char������1F525.txt
Depending on your Usenet client and system, the above Fire character may
also be displayed as a square. But the character's code will still be intact
if copied into clipboard then paste it elsewhere.
I've already tried installing all of the Windows 8 fonts into my Windows 7.
Replacing any existing ones. But the character is still displayed as a
square. Deleting the FNTCACHE.DAT and rebooting also doesn't help.
In a clean installation of Windows 7, the only font which has the Fire
character glyph is the "Segoe UI Symbol" font. But even if I change my GUI
font to "Segoe UI Symbol", the character is still displayed as a square.
So, is there a way to work around this problem?

You might (or might not) be able to fix the display problem by adjusting
the registry setting described under "Font Linking" in this Microsoft
document. Note the caution, and the need to log off and on again after
making the change.

<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/globalization/input/font-technology>

This presumes the program uses "Font Linking" rather than another font
fallback procedure, and that the program uses the registry settings for
font linking rather than its own settings.

You may still have a problem when sending messages. Other people may not
be able to being able to see characters such as code point 1F525 🔥 in
messages you send. Where your message should have shown code point 1F525
🔥, it showed an invalid UTF-8 sequence ������ instead.

* Correct UTF-8 encoding for code point 1F525 is four bytes: F0 9F 94 A5.
* Your newsreader encoded code point 1F525 as six bytes: ED A0 BD ED B4 A5

This is a common problem with older programs which were never designed
to handle supplementary plane characters (code points 10000 and up,
which do not fit into 16 bits).

[JJ]

Post by RR
You might (or might not) be able to fix the display problem by adjusting
the registry setting described under "Font Linking" in this Microsoft
document. Note the caution, and the need to log off and on again after
making the change.
<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/globalization/input/font-technology>
This presumes the program uses "Font Linking" rather than another font
fallback procedure, and that the program uses the registry settings for
font linking rather than its own settings.

I've just tried it, but I can't manage to get it to work. Since my GUI font
is set to "Microsoft Sans Serif", I appended "seguisym.ttf" onto that font's
SystemLink entry.

FYI, I've already used Windows 10 fonts in my Windows 7. And I've also tried
to use the Windows 10 FontLink entries. But it's still the same.

There's the "StaticCache.dat" file in the "Windows\Fonts" folder which I'm
suspicious of. I don't know if it's related to this problem, but I can't
find any explanation about it. FYI, Windows 10 version of the file is
18.3MB, while the Windows 7 version is only 9.1MB. I'm planning to use the
one from Windows 10, but the file is in use by the system, and I haven't had
the right time for a reboot yet. Don't know if it'll work. Fingers crossed.

Post by RR
You may still have a problem when sending messages. Other people may not
be able to being able to see characters such as code point 1F525 �� in
messages you send. Where your message should have shown code point 1F525
��, it showed an invalid UTF-8 sequence ������ instead.
* Correct UTF-8 encoding for code point 1F525 is four bytes: F0 9F 94 A5.
* Your newsreader encoded code point 1F525 as six bytes: ED A0 BD ED B4 A5
This is a common problem with older programs which were never designed
to handle supplementary plane characters (code points 10000 and up,
which do not fit into 16 bits).

Oh, you're right. It seems that my Usenet client sees the Fire character as
two codepoints rather than one. i.e. it doesn't seem to support 32-bit
codepoint.

[Mayayana]

"JJ" <***@vfemail.net> wrote

| Oh, you're right. It seems that my Usenet client sees the Fire character
as
| two codepoints rather than one. i.e. it doesn't seem to support 32-bit
| codepoint.

It's seeing it as a UTF-16 surrogate pair and
translating each word into UTF-8. Pretty impressive.
I wonder how it knows to do that. Since a newsreader
will be expecting ANSI or UTF-8, I would expect it
to render UTF-8 if it's valid or ANSI if it's not. That
makes me curious how you sent it. Did you send it
as an already reduced 16-bit surrogate pair, or was
it translated in transit to a 16-bit surrogate pair?

What a mess these different systems are!

All of which makes me wonder what value this has
to you. The chance of anyone getting your text
accurately is very slim, so why use it? Even in HTML,
where this stuff is valid, you're playing with fire, so
to speak. :)
I tried putting &#x1F525; into a webpage. IE6
doesn't render it. Pale Moon 24, from 2014, doesn't
render it. Only Firefox 52 can render it. I wouldn't
even use such a thing in a webpage, much less in
a text file.

[Mark Lloyd]

On 07/29/2018 09:56 AM, Mayayana wrote:

[snip]

Post by Mayayana
I tried putting &#x1F525; into a webpage. IE6
doesn't render it. Pale Moon 24, from 2014, doesn't
render it. Only Firefox 52 can render it. I wouldn't
even use such a thing in a webpage, much less in
a text file.

I set up a 'fire' webpage too, and tried it with several browsers:

on Win 7:

IE 11: proper shape but black instead of multicolor
IE 9: square
Firefox 61: OK

on Win 10:

IE 11: (same as on 7)
Firefox 61: OK
Edge: OK except with black border

on Win XP:

IE 5, 6, 8: square
IE 4: &x1F525;
Firefox 52: OK

on Win 2000:

Firefox 12: square with '01F' and '525' in it

on Mac:

Firefox 61: OK
Safari 11: OK

on Linux:

Firefox 61: OK
Chromium 67: black shape
Opera 54: black shape

[Mayayana]

"Mark Lloyd" <***@mail.invalid> wrote

| I set up a 'fire' webpage too, and tried it with several browsers:
|
Wow. Very thorough test. So I guess the emojis
are packaged with browsers. Mozilla does have
EmojiOneMozilla.ttf in the program folder /fonts,
but I don't have a way to view the characters in it.

[Monty]

On Sun, 29 Jul 2018 22:25:10 -0400, "Mayayana"

Post by Mayayana
|
Wow. Very thorough test. So I guess the emojis
are packaged with browsers. Mozilla does have
EmojiOneMozilla.ttf in the program folder /fonts,
but I don't have a way to view the characters in it.

I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.

1. Start "Everything" and search for emoji

2. Click (or double click) on any .ttf file with "emoji" in the name

3. All the characters are displayed in the 4th and 5th lines from the
top of the display. A sample of the characters are also displayed
in various font sizes following the 4th and 5th lines.

[Mayayana]

"Monty" <***@home.invalid> wrote

|
| I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
|

But what are you viewing them in? I don't
have any trouble finding the file. I just don't
have a program that displays the characters.
I tried a couple of font viewers, but they don't
know what to do with it.

Frankly I don't really care about emojis. I'll
probably never have a use for them and they
don't work dependably, anyway. It's a silly
hack that only works on webpages and only
under the right conditions. But I was curious
whether that file was the source for the
Firefox display.

[Monty]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 07:19:05 -0400, "Mayayana"

Post by Mayayana
|
| I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
|
But what are you viewing them in?

I am using Windows Font Viewer in Windows 10.

I see the same image in Windows 7 but this is on my neighbor's PC.

I located an old copy of Font Expert and installed that on my PC.
This showed a bit more detail about the font.

I will post some images tomorrow to show you what I see with both
viewers.

Post by Mayayana
I don't
have any trouble finding the file. I just don't
have a program that displays the characters.
I tried a couple of font viewers, but they don't
know what to do with it.
Frankly I don't really care about emojis. I'll
probably never have a use for them and they
don't work dependably, anyway. It's a silly
hack that only works on webpages and only
under the right conditions. But I was curious
whether that file was the source for the
Firefox display.

[Mayayana]

"Monty" <***@home.invalid> wrote

| I am using Windows Font Viewer in Windows 10.
|
| I see the same image in Windows 7 but this is on my neighbor's PC.
|

I have Font Viewer on XP but it doesn't seem to work.
I actually never noticed that before. I guess if I want
to check out a font I open Paint Shop Pro or another
program that handles them. But, like IrfanView, that
won't show anything in the Mozilla font.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Post by Mayayana
|
| I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
|
But what are you viewing them in? I don't
have any trouble finding the file. I just don't
have a program that displays the characters.
I tried a couple of font viewers, but they don't
know what to do with it.

I did what he said - well, used everything to find ttf files, I don't
have the one with emoji in the name - and to my surprise saw the font
I'd double-clicked on; I don't think I've installed any font viewers on
this machine, so I presume it must be one built into Windows (7-32).
Supported by the fact that the title bar shows only the font name, no
viewer name, and the only controls are two buttons "Print" and
"\/ Install" (where \/ is the requires-privilege symbol).

Post by Mayayana
Frankly I don't really care about emojis. I'll
probably never have a use for them and they
don't work dependably, anyway. It's a silly
hack that only works on webpages and only
under the right conditions. But I was curious
whether that file was the source for the
Firefox display.

I don't think I'd ever use them, though I don't have any hatred for them
(same as the rest of social media; although I don't use it [in the
modern sense of "social media"], I don't have any antagonism to those
who do. Except where they assume that I do too, as they increasingly do
on the media here).

[JJ]

Post by Monty
I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
1. Start "Everything" and search for emoji
2. Click (or double click) on any .ttf file with "emoji" in the name
3. All the characters are displayed in the 4th and 5th lines from the
top of the display. A sample of the characters are also displayed
in various font sizes following the 4th and 5th lines.

Is that Everything's font file viewer? Or Windows'?

Cause it doesn't work in my Window 7.

Loading Image...

And not even Windows 10.

Loading Image...

[Paul]

Post by JJ

Post by Monty
I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
1. Start "Everything" and search for emoji
2. Click (or double click) on any .ttf file with "emoji" in the name
3. All the characters are displayed in the 4th and 5th lines from the
top of the display. A sample of the characters are also displayed
in various font sizes following the 4th and 5th lines.

Is that Everything's font file viewer? Or Windows'?
Cause it doesn't work in my Window 7.
https://i.imgur.com/HOcGJZ9.png
And not even Windows 10.
https://i.imgur.com/5XaFVP9.png

The Windows tool only seems to show the first page
of the font. The scroll bar isn't the right size for
any fun.

FontForge for the EmojiOne TTF font, you have
to scroll a long way to see "Fire", and even then,
you will be disappointed by the lack of color.
I don't think color was ever added to FontForge.
And the person who worked on that, put a *lot*
of work into it. It wasn't a 10 minute project.

I tried copying and pasting "Fire" into Wordpad,
and a surrogate pair was used. And Firefox
would display that in color.

Loading Image...

All this in Win10.

Paul

[JJ]

Post by Paul

Post by JJ

Post by Monty
I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
1. Start "Everything" and search for emoji
2. Click (or double click) on any .ttf file with "emoji" in the name
3. All the characters are displayed in the 4th and 5th lines from the
top of the display. A sample of the characters are also displayed
in various font sizes following the 4th and 5th lines.

Is that Everything's font file viewer? Or Windows'?
Cause it doesn't work in my Window 7.
https://i.imgur.com/HOcGJZ9.png
And not even Windows 10.
https://i.imgur.com/5XaFVP9.png

The Windows tool only seems to show the first page
of the font. The scroll bar isn't the right size for
any fun.
FontForge for the EmojiOne TTF font, you have
to scroll a long way to see "Fire", and even then,
you will be disappointed by the lack of color.
I don't think color was ever added to FontForge.
And the person who worked on that, put a *lot*
of work into it. It wasn't a 10 minute project.
I tried copying and pasting "Fire" into Wordpad,
and a surrogate pair was used. And Firefox
would display that in color.
https://s33.postimg.cc/49mt7rrvj/fire.gif
All this in Win10.
Paul

Firefox can indeed display the Fire character, and in full color. But that
doesn't conern Windows, since Firefox uses its own font rendering engine.
That's why it can even display it properly on Windows 7.

The main problem is when using Windows' font rendering engine.

[Monty]

Post by JJ

Post by Monty
I can display the characters by using Everything search engine.
1. Start "Everything" and search for emoji
2. Click (or double click) on any .ttf file with "emoji" in the name
3. All the characters are displayed in the 4th and 5th lines from the
top of the display. A sample of the characters are also displayed
in various font sizes following the 4th and 5th lines.

Is that Everything's font file viewer? Or Windows'?

It is Windows Font Viewer. If you need further evidence you might
observe the icon in the top left just to the left of the font name in
the title bar. It is the capital letter 'A'. Now observe the same
icon on the task bar. Right click this icon and note the name at the
top of the box. Does it say 'Windows Font Viewer' ?

The picture that you posted on IMGUR is a picture of Windows Font
Viewer displaying the characters used in the font EmojiOne Mozilla.

Post by JJ
Cause it doesn't work in my Window 7.

Can you please describe what doesn't work in your Windows 7 and in
Windows 10 ?

For example, I know it doesn't display some of the special characters
that I can see when I use Font Expert.

Post by JJ
https://i.imgur.com/HOcGJZ9.png
And not even Windows 10.
https://i.imgur.com/5XaFVP9.png

Regards,

[JJ]

Post by Monty
Can you please describe what doesn't work in your Windows 7 and in
Windows 10 ?

You said that you can display the characters using Everything search engine.

I assumed that you meant the symbol charaters. e.g. that Fire character
which I've mentioned. Or is that not what you meant?

Keep in mind that the OP is about font rendering problem of specific Unicode
characters.

[Mayayana]

"JJ" <***@vfemail.net> wrote

| You said that you can display the characters using Everything search
engine.
|

I clarified that and he's clarified it:
Everything was a confusing sidetrack. It sounded like
he was using that to view fonts but he was just
describing how he found TTF files. :)

Everything does nothing, except list files on disk.
He's viewing the fonts in Windows Font Viewer.

[Paul]

Post by Mayayana
| You said that you can display the characters using Everything search
engine.
|
Everything was a confusing sidetrack. It sounded like
he was using that to view fonts but he was just
describing how he found TTF files. :)
Everything does nothing, except list files on disk.
He's viewing the fonts in Windows Font Viewer.

So then, maybe making a filename with the Fire surrogate
in it, would render in color in Everything.exe ? Hah!

The only way to spread the capability, is using the .svg
font, and how the hell can Windows use that ?

https://helpx.adobe.com/typekit/using/ot-svg-color-fonts.html

"Applications that support OpenType-SVG fonts

* Photoshop CC 2017
* Illustrator CC
* Firefox, versions 32 and above
* Microsoft Edge (in Windows 10 Anniversary Edition and above)
* In Windows 10, the DirectWrite and Direct2D platform components
allow OpenType-SVG support in any apps that use those APIs
"

A limited list...

Thunderbird might inherit the capability, simply
because 90% of the code in Thunderbird is a copy
of Firefox.

Paul

[Mayayana]

"Paul" <***@needed.invalid> wrote

| So then, maybe making a filename with the Fire surrogate
| in it, would render in color in Everything.exe ? Hah!
|

Interesting thought. I read somewhere that Windows
file names supports surrogates, yet the official standards
people recommend not assigning characters to them.
The whole idea seem odd to me. Unicode-16 has been
in Windows for ages, yet there's very little call for it.
If it were not for Asian languages we'd probably all
do just fine with codepages.

[JJ]

Post by Paul
So then, maybe making a filename with the Fire surrogate
in it, would render in color in Everything.exe ? Hah!

LOL.

I don't think Windows' own font rendering engine supports color fonts.
Otherwise, I'd see it in colors on the file name. Or is it that the Segoe UI
Symbol font's Fire character isn't in colors?

That made me curious, so I checked it using Wordpad...

Apparently, Windows 7 doesn't support color fonts. As expected.

Loading Image...

Windows 8 got a little smarter for displaying the Fire character, but still
no color font support.

Loading Image...

Windows 10 seems trying to support color font, but looks like it fails. As
if they're playing Snake and Ladder.

Loading Image...

And interrestingly, Firefox cheated when displaying the Fire character. I
didn't expect to find that.

Loading Image...

[Paul]

Post by JJ

Post by Paul
So then, maybe making a filename with the Fire surrogate
in it, would render in color in Everything.exe ? Hah!

LOL.
I don't think Windows' own font rendering engine supports color fonts.
Otherwise, I'd see it in colors on the file name. Or is it that the Segoe UI
Symbol font's Fire character isn't in colors?
That made me curious, so I checked it using Wordpad...
Apparently, Windows 7 doesn't support color fonts. As expected.
https://i.imgur.com/ySBD3GL.png
Windows 8 got a little smarter for displaying the Fire character, but still
no color font support.
https://i.imgur.com/uj5b0Ll.png
Windows 10 seems trying to support color font, but looks like it fails. As
if they're playing Snake and Ladder.
https://i.imgur.com/11S3XsM.png
And interrestingly, Firefox cheated when displaying the Fire character. I
didn't expect to find that.
https://i.imgur.com/vvzSl0A.png

Windows 10 actually has a Segoe font with the word Emoji
in the name. "seguiemj.ttf" . Segoe UI Emoji OpenType.

Paul

[JJ]

Post by Paul
Windows 10 actually has a Segoe font with the word Emoji
in the name. "seguiemj.ttf" . Segoe UI Emoji OpenType.
Paul

Oh, I see.

[Paul]

Post by JJ

Post by Paul
Windows 10 actually has a Segoe font with the word Emoji
in the name. "seguiemj.ttf" . Segoe UI Emoji OpenType.
Paul

Oh, I see.

Someone at Microsoft has a sense of humor.

I bet they have a font for blockchain too.

Paul

[Mark Lloyd]

On 07/31/2018 09:59 PM, JJ wrote:

[snip]

Post by JJ
Windows 10 seems trying to support color font, but looks like it fails. As
if they're playing Snake and Ladder.

I did get color with the Edge browser, but is still wasn't right. It had
a black border.

[snip]

[Paul]

Post by Mayayana
|
Wow. Very thorough test. So I guess the emojis
are packaged with browsers. Mozilla does have
EmojiOneMozilla.ttf in the program folder /fonts,
but I don't have a way to view the characters in it.

That font may be created with the intention of
being locked to the application program. It displays
in FontForge, but you can't access glyphs or anything.
Only a tiny tiny icon in B&W shows "fire". I couldn't
get any nicer presentation to appear.

Paul

[Mark Lloyd]

Post by Mayayana
|
Wow. Very thorough test. So I guess the emojis
are packaged with browsers. Mozilla does have
EmojiOneMozilla.ttf in the program folder /fonts,
but I don't have a way to view the characters in it.

I have so many browsers (including old IE) around to test my website.
BTW, it works in MSIE 3 (although no Javascript).

[JJ]

Post by Mark Lloyd
IE 11: proper shape but black instead of multicolor
IE 9: square
Firefox 61: OK
IE 11: (same as on 7)
Firefox 61: OK
Edge: OK except with black border
IE 5, 6, 8: square
IE 4: &x1F525;
Firefox 52: OK
Firefox 12: square with '01F' and '525' in it
Firefox 61: OK
Safari 11: OK
Firefox 61: OK
Chromium 67: black shape
Opera 54: black shape

Third party web browsers use their own font rendering engine, so their
result will always be diffrent than MSIE, Edge, and Windows.

[JJ]

Post by Mayayana
It's seeing it as a UTF-16 surrogate pair and
translating each word into UTF-8. Pretty impressive.
I wonder how it knows to do that. Since a newsreader
will be expecting ANSI or UTF-8, I would expect it
to render UTF-8 if it's valid or ANSI if it's not.

My Usenet client (40tude Dialog) supports Unicode, but apparently it's not
yet aware of 32-bit Unicode.

Post by Mayayana
That makes me curious how you sent it. Did you send it
as an already reduced 16-bit surrogate pair, or was
it translated in transit to a 16-bit surrogate pair?

I copied the character from a software called "BabelMap" into clipboard,
then pasted it into the message composing window of my Usenet client.
Visually, it showed as one square character, but if I "walked" the cursor
through it, I counted two characters.

If I paste the character into Wordpad (after setting the font to "Segoe UI
Symbol"), it properly shows as a fire symbol. Walking the cursor through it
shows that it's indeed only one character. If I place the cursor after the
character then press ALT+X, the character is converted to "1F525". So, this
shows that BabelMap properly constructed and copied the Fire character into
the clipboard.

Post by Mayayana
All of which makes me wonder what value this has
to you. The chance of anyone getting your text
accurately is very slim, so why use it? Even in HTML,
where this stuff is valid, you're playing with fire, so
to speak. :)

Can't be helped. I like my Usenet client despite being old and unmaintained.

Yes, there are other "better" Usenet clients, but despite being better,
newer, and more secure, the disadvantages for me of using the other Usenet
clients are greater then the advantages. In all aspects combined.

Post by Mayayana
I tried putting &#x1F525; into a webpage. IE6
doesn't render it. Pale Moon 24, from 2014, doesn't
render it. Only Firefox 52 can render it. I wouldn't
even use such a thing in a webpage, much less in
a text file.

IMO, 32-bit Unicode is a relatively new standard. Many applications
don't support it yet. Some rarely used CJK characters are defined as 32-bit
code points, so while most applications support CJK, they may not be able to
properly render 32-bit code points.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

[]

Post by JJ

Post by Mayayana
All of which makes me wonder what value this has
to you. The chance of anyone getting your text
accurately is very slim, so why use it? Even in HTML,
where this stuff is valid, you're playing with fire, so
to speak. :)

Can't be helped. I like my Usenet client despite being old and unmaintained.

Like you, I am old and unmaintained - as is my usenet client too.

Post by JJ
Yes, there are other "better" Usenet clients, but despite being better,
newer, and more secure, the disadvantages for me of using the other Usenet
clients are greater then the advantages. In all aspects combined.

Likewise.
[]

[RR]

Post by JJ
IMO, 32-bit Unicode is a relatively new standard.

The standard has existed for about 20 years. That is, for most of the
existence of Unicode.

Your copy of BabelMap will tell you that Unicode range F0000-FFFFF was
defined in July 1996, and Unicode ranges 10300-1034F, 1D000-1D1DD,
1D400-1D7FF, and 20000-2A6DF were defined in March 2001. One way to
check is to pick a character, use Tools / Character Properties, then
look under General Information at the box labelled 'Introduced in Version:'.

Post by JJ
Many applications don't support it yet.

Windows 9x and Me only supported 16-bit Unicode screen output. Many
applications did not get updated until users moved off those old
versions of Windows.

Unfortunately, 40tude Dialog has not been updated since 2005. ☹️

[mechanic]

Post by RR
Unfortunately, 40tude Dialog has not been updated since 2005.

Amazing isn't it. And still going strong and doing the business.

[Mayayana]

"RR" <***@icemail.aq> wrote

| > IMO, 32-bit Unicode is a relatively new standard.
|
| The standard has existed for about 20 years. That is, for most of the
| existence of Unicode.
|

That doesn't mean much if software isn't set up to
use the range. Even UTF-8 is only now getting wide
support, because it's become the standard for webpages
and for plain text in Linux.
Why wasn't it supported more widely earlier? Simply
because people don't need it. It's rare for anyone to
need to type both Russian and English, for instance,
in a single file. In an English-language webpage there's
little need for UTF-8. (Copyright signs for Linux
visitors who don't have codepages? That's pretty
much it, unless you happen to be a curly quotes
fetishist.)

And if keyboards can't type it, then what's the point?
You need not only software that can render the characters
but also software that provides a way to enter the
characters. And for that to happen you need relevance.

Emojis on webpages are essentially icons. HTML can
be used to express them if the browser supports them,
but they're not actually characters. Mozilla's emoji TTF
could just as well have been done as a GIF resource.

I have Paint Shop Pro 16 and the latest IrfanView.
Neither sees the emojis in Mozilla's TTF. Pale Moon 24,
relatively recent, also can't show the fire emoji. And
why should they? How often will such a thing be used by
anyone but teenagers chatting on phones?

Any website designer who uses the fire emoji will
have to assume that a notable percentage of visitors
are not seeing what they intend. You're probably safer
using Wing Dings. Mac and Linux people will see
alphanumeric characters, but they're only about 10%
of people online. There's no flame in Wing Dings, but "M"
is a nice cartoon bomb. :)