What version of Unicode does FC 5.5 use?

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I have a quick question. What version of Unicode does FontCreator 5.5 support?

Under the “Ranges” section of the font, there are options for versions 0, 1, 2, and 3. Are these the versions of Unicode that are used? In other words, is Version 3 under this window the same as Unicode Standard Version 3?

The reason I ask is a number of glyphs that I have created, do not appear in either the Character Map or with the Insert Symbol feature of MS Office.

They are mapped correctly, and the appropriate ranges are checked. Many of these characters came into existance in versions 4 and 5.

The characters can be inserted using the ALT-xxxxx codes. For example, I implemented U27D0 “White Diamond with Centered Dot”.

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Under the “Ranges” section of the font, there are options for versions 0, 1, 2, and 3. Are these the versions of Unicode that are used? In other words, is Version 3 under this window the same as Unicode Standard Version 3?

As I understand it those versions are versions of the TrueType specification. The version numbers are not versions of Unicode.

I used Windows Explorer to find the following file.

Hard disc drive letter being used:\Program Files\High-Logic\FontCreator\Unicode\UnicodeData.txt

That file comes wth FontCreator yet is, as I understand it, produced by the Unicode Consortium.

I searched in these forums for UnicodeData and found four threads. However, I have not found what I was looking for as I was trying to find a post which came out when Unicode was updated either by a whole vesion or by 0.1 of a version which post stated where to get the latest version of UnicodeData.txt from the http://www.unicode.org webspace.

http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1244

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/renaming-the-unicode-names-for-glyphs/841/1

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/problem-displaying-glyph/558/1

http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/i-have-a-question-and-do-not-know-the-technical-terminology/495/1

However, the issue is likely to be one with the application program using the font.

I note that you wrote as follows.

The characters can be inserted using the ALT-xxxxx codes. For example, I implemented U27D0 “White Diamond with Centered Dot”.

When using WordPad, using an Alt code uses the decimal code value, whereas in U+27D0 the 27D0 is a hexadecimal value, so with WordPad the Alt code would be 10192 as 10192 is the decimal equivalent of hexadecimal 27D0. Some readers might like to know that using Microsoft Calculator in View Scientific mode is a good way to convert between hexadecimal and decimal in either direction.

I just tried making a test font by adding U+27D0 to a new FontCreator font. Although I would normally add a Postscript name for the glyph I did not do so on this occasion. When I tested the font with WordPad, Alt 10192 displayed the glyph, yet trying it with Word 97, which is the only version of Word here the glyph was not displayed in the Insert Symbol section. I have never used Alts with Word 97 and do not know if it is an available facility with the Word 97 which is installed here.

So, could you try your font with WordPad and observe whether the glyph appears please?

William Overington

12 April 2007

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FontCreator 5.5 comes with Unicode Standard, Version 4.1.0. The most recent version today is 5.0.0. The upcoming release of FontCreator will include this latest version. If you don’t want to wait, just update both UnicodeData.txt and Blocks.txt located in the Unicode folder of FontCreator. By default the location is:
C:\Program Files\High-Logic\FontCreator\Unicode

You can download the latest release from here:
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt

You need to restart FontCreator in order to use the updated files.

P.s. I don’t think this will solve your problem, but do let us know your results.

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Thanks for the fast response.

When using WordPad, using an Alt code uses the decimal code value, whereas in U+27D0 the 27D0 is a hexadecimal value, so with WordPad the Alt code would be 10192 as 10192 is the decimal equivalent of hexadecimal 27D0.

Sorry, I meant to say that I use the decimal values.


When I tested the font with WordPad, Alt 10192 displayed the glyph, yet trying it with Word 97, which is the only version of Word here the glyph was not displayed in the Insert Symbol section. I have never used Alts with Word 97 and do not know if it is an available facility with the Word 97 which is installed here.

The ALT+number approach works for WordPad and Word 2003. The symbol isn’t listed in either Word 2003 or the Character Map feature that is part of WinXP SP2.

I have the feeling that the character isn’t displayed for one of two reasons. The first, would be the application only lists ranges it knew about at the time of creation. Newer fonts would not be displayed. This would be sensible since applications like Word love to group related ranges together - e.g. Mathematical Operators and Supplemental Mathematical Operators.

The other possibility could be the font. I’m not sure how ranges are stored in the font file. If each range includes a start index and end index, new chars might be excluded. Of course, I have not clue.

I’ll take a look at that data file and those links. Perhaps, if it is second issue, I could hack it. Perhaps…

Thanks for your help.

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You can download the latest release from here:
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt >

Thank you. I was writing my other response when you replied.

Have a great day!

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Are you able to see and use the characters through MainType? You should be able to copy a character from MainType to a Unicode aware application. But as you pointed out, it is true older versions of MS Word don’t support all Unicode characters. I’m not sure if this is still true with Office 2007. Since Unicode support for MS Office (and other software) is provided by Uniscribe (USP10.DLL), you might be able to get an update.