Defined but not displayed characters in a TT font

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1

Hi,

I’m trying to customize an existing TT font.

Please bear with me, I’m new at working with fonts.

The fonts codepoints are in the format: $F0xx

xx goes from 20 (which maps the space, as usual for 0x20) to FF.

The font works fines mostly with an app that does not support Unicode characters. This app displays $F061 as the letter ‘a’, again normal for 0x61.

But I have two characters defined as $F0FE and $F07F that are not displayed. Instead, the app displays the .notdef $F0F0 character.

So, I have 2 questions:

  • How can I “simplify” the font, so that the mapping will be $20 for space for example rather than $F020 (I have no ides what the $F0 is used for)?

  • How can I debug what’s happening with the 2 characters that are not displayed?

Thank you in advance for any help.

2

It’s a Symbol Font.

F020 is the Hexadecimal codepoint in the range used by symbol fonts.

To convert it to a standard font (Symbol fonts are legacy fonts), from the Tools menu, Convert, Convert to Unicode.

That will Change F020 to $20 which is the Hex code for a space character.

BTW: If you find it easier to think in Decimal, change the display from the View menu, Display format, Decimal (shortcut Ctrl J) and the codepoint for space will then be shown as 32.

The $F0FE and F0FF characters will be shown as $EE and $EF in Hex, or 238 and 239 in Decimal. That’s the î ï characters in most fonts.

The reason that these are displayed as .notdef glyphs is because you’re using an unregistered version of FontCreator. Please see the FAQ at the top of the support forum.

3

Thanks for the fast reply.

That works only partially. The first usual characters are properly converted indeed, but all the special symbol ones get numbers like $2021.

The resulting font is no longer usuable in my app, which does not display any more the symbol characters that have these new mappings. Also, its appearance becomes unpleasant to see.

BTW: > If you find it easier to think in Decimal, change the display from the View menu, Display format, Decimal (shortcut Ctrl J) and the codepoint for space will then be shown as 32.

I prefer Hex in this case, but thanks for the tip.


The reason that these are displayed as .notdef glyphs is because you’re using an unregistered version of FontCreator. Please see the > FAQ at the top of the support forum.

That’s not it. The font generated shows plenty of characters (outside of the "A-Z, a-z, 0-9, !=?@-,./ and" range) that are not available in unregistered mode. Only these 2 are problematic.

Other edited fonts do not have this problem, only this one.