Characters show as square boxes in Unicode file

Characters show as square boxes in Unicode file

221
Basic UserBasic User
221

    Jun 14, 2011#1

    I recently upgraded to v17 of UltraEdit, mainly with a view to making increased use of unicode.

    I was surprised then when I found that some unicode files, which displayed fine (and still do) in my old version of UE, show empty square boxes in the new version. Same file, same machine, same font choice, only the version of UE is different. One such file is a UTF-8 file, and some of the characters in question are U+2220, U+2227, U+2214, U+2045, U+2046. This happens in all common fonts (Courier New, Times New Roman, Arial, etc) but UE17 shows the right glyphs in Arial Unicode MS.

    I don't know that it is a UE problem, because the wider pattern is very mixed, eg. some other programs show the proper glyphs and some show the boxes. But the fact is that the two versions of UE are on opposite sides, with v17 on the wrong side. Any ideas? Is there a configuration setting which might affect this?

    6,603548
    Grand MasterGrand Master
    6,603548

      Jun 14, 2011#2

      If the Unicode characters are ∠ ∧ ∔ ⁅ ⁆ then only font Arial Unicode MS contains glyphs for that characters. This font has a file size of 22.730 kB while standard Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New have only about 350 kB which indicates that the number of glyphs is much lower and therefore these fonts do not include full Unicode table.

      You have not posted which version of UltraEdit your "old version" is and therefore I can't test if that version really displays the same file different on the same machine. It is possible that "old version" uses a different font because column mode is enabled (different font setting) or the file containing these Unicode characters has a special file extension and this file extension is registered separately in UltraEdit at Advanced - Configuration - Editor - Word Wrap/Tab Settings and have a separate font assignment.

      BTW: If I insert the 5 characters into a MS Word 2007 document using Insert Symbol command and font Arial Unicode MS, Word uses always font Arial Unicode MS for those 5 characters and I can't select a different font for those 5 characters. If I copy the 5 characters into a Unicode file in UltraEdit, select it there, copy to clipboard (remove formatting data) and paste it into the Word document in a Times New Roman section, Word shows the first 2 characters as rectangular box (font Times New Roman), third character is displayed correct because word uses font Lucida Sans Unicode and the last 2 characters are also displayed correct because Word uses Arial Unicode MS for these 2 characters.

      221
      Basic UserBasic User
      221

        Jun 14, 2011#3

        Thanks for your reply.

        So, what is happening on my machine is that some applications are showing these characters, missing in Courier New, as glyphs from Arial Unicode MS, while other applications are showing them as square boxes.

        My old version was v10.10c, but I don't think this is a UE problem after all. On another machine (XP), both v10.10c and v17 are showing square boxes. While on my Vista machine, as I reported before, v10.10c (and NotePad) show the correct glyphs (maybe taken from another font, some people seem to call this "automatic font switching"), while v17 (and WordPad) show the boxes.

        Unless there is some way (via the registry, on an app-by-app basis?) to control this "automatic font switching", it looks like I may have a Windows corruption.

          Jun 16, 2011#4

          Just to tidy this up, I got the explanation from UE support.

          Fortunately there was no Windows corruption, and the behaviour (though bizarre) is predictable from the versions of UE and Windows. This is the exact opposite of what I suspected last time.

          Officially, no version of UE supports font substitution. But to their surprise and my relief, UE support confirmed that they did observe it to happen, but only with a narrow range of versions around v10.10c and then only in Vista. The reason remains a mystery.

          What matters most to me is that the disappearance of the substitute glyphs is fully accounted for by my update of UE, and is not the result of a machine reboot with data loss, which happened soon after. Sadly, the substitute glyphs seem to be gone for good, though.