Re: "Missing character" glyph

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 16:12:55 EDT


I can't seem to find a mention of this earlier (my apologies if I missed
it) but the 'missing character' glyph is not necessarily system specific -
in fact at least TrueType and OpenType support a font specific missing
glyph. Any unassigned code point you choose will get the missing glyph
display for the font that happens to be selected for that character (on
many systems that's no longer easily predictable, due to font
substitutions). In short, there's no guarantee that *any* specific code
point will give you the 'typical' display.

A./

At 08:53 AM 8/1/02 -0700, Doug Ewell wrote:
>I wrote:
>
> > You can't use U+FFEF,
> > because some process might actually filter out noncharacters.
>
>Of course I meant U+FFFE. There is nothing special about U+FFEF;
>although that code point is currently unassigned, there's no reason it
>couldn't be in the future. (It would be the perfect spot for HALFWIDTH
>BLACK CIRCLE, for instance.)
>
>And yes, I did just advocate the use of noncharacters after all. U+FFFE
>and U+FFFF might not be the best choice, but U+FDD0 through U+FDEF
>should work fine.
>
>-Doug Ewell
> Fullerton, California



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