How to identify a hidden glyph

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Brother Gabriel-Marie
Posts: 286
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2007 6:12 pm

How to identify a hidden glyph

Post by Brother Gabriel-Marie »

This isn't directly related to a High Logic program (unless I can use MainType or FontCreator to help me do this.

But I am copying a text string (phone number) from an application's GUI (Google Voice where the phone number shows at the top of the Messaging window) and pasting it into the dialing box on my softphone (PhonerLite), and instead of dialing the number, it runs a feature code in the phone system (FreePBX).

I have determined that it is because when I copy the text that there is an extra glyph at the beginning and end of the text string. When I paste it into PhonerLite, they don't show, but they seem to get dialed. But when I paste that string into certain other text editors, I can see a ? character on both ends of the string - so I know there must be a hidden glyph.

My question is, therefore, how do I find out what glyphs they are?
I pasted the string into MainType and they don't show there.
What I think is happening is that I am pasting a unicode string into an ansi textbox. The glyphs don't display, but are still in the value.
Is there any way to paste that string somewhere that I can identify those glyphs? They are normally invisible unless they are pasted into and ansi box and substitued with ?'s.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: How to identify a hidden glyph

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Try pasting the text into BabelMap.
BabelMapPopUp.png
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Brother Gabriel-Marie
Posts: 286
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2007 6:12 pm

Re: How to identify a hidden glyph

Post by Brother Gabriel-Marie »

Okay, I've tried that, but the characters that are prepended do not appear. Either they are invisible or BabelMap doesn't receive them via the clipboard.
However, if I check the box for "simple rendering" there below the edit box, then I can see them as two different characters that I cannot copy and paste into this forum's text area.

However, if, under "simple rendering" I select the radio button for "UCN" then I get these:
(in unicode block for General Punctuation)
\u202A
\u202C

and in hex (in unicode block for General Punctuation)
‪ U+202A LEFT-TO-RIGHT EMBEDDING [LRE]
‬ U+202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING [PDF]

and in dec:
‪ U+8234 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-8234 : zé
‬ U+8236 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-8236 : bó

So, I guess I've figured it out! Thanks for the help!
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