Finding a Font to Support a Unicode Block (X11)

[Michael Rohan]

Hi Folks,

Just posted this to comp.fonts, but figured I should try here also.

Not sure if this is the correct group, but I have code that generated
Unicode strings displayed via Java on X Windows.  The strings include
characters from the Enclosed Alphanumerics Unicode block.  On one
Linux system (where I've installed every font package I could find),
the strings display as expected.  On another Linux (default) system,
they display as little squares, i.e., missing.

Is there a way to directly identify the font needed to support a
particular Unicode block?

Take care,
Michael.

[Bruce Byfield]

On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 13:33 -0700, Michael Rohan wrote:
>  Hi Folks, 
>  
>  Just posted this to comp.fonts, but figured I should try here also.
>  
>  
>  Not sure if this is the correct group, but I have code that generated 
>  Unicode strings displayed via Java on X Windows.  The strings include 
>  characters from the Enclosed Alphanumerics Unicode block.  On one 
>  Linux system (where I've installed every font package I could find), 
>  the strings display as expected.  On another Linux (default) system, 
>  they display as little squares, i.e., missing. 
>  
>  
>  Is there a way to directly identify the font needed to support a 
>  particular Unicode block?  
Not that I'm aware of. However, the larger the size of the font
file, the better your chances are. 

Also, the SIL fonts, such as Charis and Gentium, are more likely to be
useful to you because they support a much wider variety of Unicode
characters than most fonts.
-- 
Bruce Byfield <bbyfield(a)axion.net&gt;

[Matthew Flaschen]

Michael Rohan wrote:
>  Hi Folks,
>  
>  Just posted this to comp.fonts, but figured I should try here also.
>  
>  Not sure if this is the correct group, but I have code that generated
>  Unicode strings displayed via Java on X Windows.  The strings include
>  characters from the Enclosed Alphanumerics Unicode block. 
Font-config can do this, though its documentation, API, and command-line
interface are all rather inscrutable.  I wrote a program that can take
any character as input and give you the filename of a font with it.

Just put the two files anywhere, then:

make
./CharSearch ①

I.e. put the character you're looking for as the first and only
argument.  Only tested with en_US.UTF-8 as LANG environment variable.

Matt Flaschen

CC=gcc
CFLAGS=--std=c99 -I /usr/include -I /usr/include/fontconfig -L /usr/lib/ -l fontconfig
OBJ=CharSearch

CharSearch: CharSearch.c
	${CC} ${CFLAGS} CharSearch.c -o ${OBJ}

clean:
	rm ${OBJ}

[Michael Rohan]

Hi,

Thank you, this looks like it might be what I'm looking for.

Take care,
Michael.

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 12:38 AM, Matthew Flaschen <
matthew.flaschen(a)gatech.edu&gt; wrote:

>  Michael Rohan wrote:
>  > Hi Folks,
>  >
>  > Just posted this to comp.fonts, but figured I should try here also.
>  >
>  > Not sure if this is the correct group, but I have code that generated
>  > Unicode strings displayed via Java on X Windows.  The strings include
>  > characters from the Enclosed Alphanumerics Unicode block.
>
>  Font-config can do this, though its documentation, API, and command-line
>  interface are all rather inscrutable.  I wrote a program that can take
>  any character as input and give you the filename of a font with it.
>
>  Just put the two files anywhere, then:
>
>  make
>  ./CharSearch �
>
>  I.e. put the character you're looking for as the first and only
>  argument.  Only tested with en_US.UTF-8 as LANG environment variable.
>
>  Matt Flaschen
>
>  CC=gcc
>  CFLAGS=--std=c99 -I /usr/include -I /usr/include/fontconfig -L /usr/lib/ -l
>  fontconfig
>  OBJ=CharSearch
>
>  CharSearch: CharSearch.c
>         ${CC} ${CFLAGS} CharSearch.c -o ${OBJ}
>
>  clean:
>         rm ${OBJ}
>

[Roberto Ragusa]

Matthew Flaschen wrote:

>  I wrote a program that can take
>  any character as input and give you the filename of a font with it. 
It looks useful.
Did you try to have it included in the official package?

-- 
   Roberto Ragusa    mail at robertoragusa.it