For Exploring Your Unicode Fonts

Tegan Van De Vliert - 10:23am Mar 6, 2007 PST
Guest User

Hi,

I read the article "Two Bytes of the Cherry: Unicode and Mac OS X", and it was very helpful to
me. The only part I
could not figure out how to do on my own computer was enabling the Symbol mapping in the
International
preference pane- I could not find an option to do this. Also, I couldn't find the next step-
opening Key Caps from
the Application folder's Utilities folder, and choosing Symbol from the Font menu. There was
no Key Caps in the
Apps folder.

I was very interested in the software that lets you see all your fonts and see which have what
Unicode characters. It
led to this discovery I wanted to share, if you didn't know it.

-I found out another way to view fonts and all the Unicode characters they contain- through
Adobe Illustrator.
Obviously, you have to have Adobe Illustrator to do it. I haven't yet checked other Adobe
software to see if they
have it, such as InDesign or Photoshop. But in Illustrator, one can go to the Type drop down
menu, and select
glyphs. It will show the current font being used, or you can select any other font installed on
the computer. It will
then show every character available in that font! No guessing.

Also, there is an option to show "Alternatives to Current Selection", which sounds useful, but
I can't figure out how
to use. There is also a drop down menu on the glyph window tab, that looks like a tiny
arrowhead, with cryptic
options such as "expert forms, JIS 78, or monospaced third-width forms, or a simple "reset".
Haven't figured these
out yet either.

The Glyph menu/feature is perfect for multi-language project requirements in Illustrator, and
as an alternative to
FontChecker software if you don't have it.

I hope this helps. If you already knew this, I apologize. But the Unicode and Mac OSX article
seemed like a good
place to mention this feature as another option to explore your fonts, for those who have
Illustrator software, or
for someone like me, who wanted to know about using Unicode in regards to using
Illustrator.

Thank you,

Tegan