Supplemental Arrows-C in MS Word

General
1

I have added two characters, U+1F855/56 to my font; these are in the Supplemental Arrows-C range. The Unicode values are correct as shown in the glyph properties panel, and the range for “Arrows” (which includes the supplementary ones) is checked in the coverage panel. The exported font works fine in TextEdit and Libre Office, but the arrows do not display in Word 2016 (I get the ‘unavailable character’ box). I can use Segoe UI Symbol or Code 2023 to see these Unicode values in Word, so it’s not a Word issue. Any ideas?

Update: the original font works also in a music notation program I use (MuseScore) but not in Affinity Publisher. I exported a .ttf rather than .otf font, not expecting any difference. But now everything works in Word and Affinity. Affinity Publisher is a very up to date program, typographically speaking (excellent support for OT features etc.), so I would not have expected it to have any issues with an .otf font. But who knows . . . ? Is there some weirdness in how FontCreator exports fonts with Plane 1 characters?

2

Thanks for the detailed report. Word 2016 might mis-handle Plane-1 (non-BMP) characters when the font uses CFF/OTF outlines. That’s why your TTF export works.

If you have an OTF+CFF that does show U+1F855/U+1F856 in those apps, please share it, so I can look into it from our side.

3

I have (as far as I can tell) only two fonts on my system that contain the Supplemental Arrows-C, Segoe UI Symbol and Code 2003. I just checked and they are both .ttf files. If I find any .otf fonts with this range, I’ll let you know.

Update: I just discovered Noto Sans Symbols 2. It works in Word and (guess what) it is a .ttf.