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When I'm running Linux/X, if the current font doesn't know a character it renders the character using another font on the system that does. So then it's just a

When I'm running Linux/X, if the current font doesn't know a character it renders the character using another font on the system that does. So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character, and I think a reasonable attempt has been made to do that - although maybe that's based on the fonts I've chosen to install, since that's something that's moderately important to me. When I'm running Windows (for work) it only renders characters for the current font, and I get box instead of a character. (Traditionally at least; maybe this has changed? - it's not important to my work so I haven't really investigated, but as a feature it's so useful it's hard to believe it hasn't happened yet.) But as you can see this isn't a problem with Unicode but the configuration of your system. If it chooses to show you a character from another font, then that's good and convenient. Note that Windows support for emoji is significantly better. I think Gtk+3/Gnome apps and Firefox have improved significantly this year (wow, lots of color!), but they're still lagging.

rspeer 8y ago
> So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character Have you ever tried to literally do this? You won't succeed. The Google Noto font family is getting there, but I think they're only caught up with like Unicode 6, and we're on Unicode 11 now. There are some recently-added scripts that you won't find in any font. The Unicode tables render them in proprietary fonts that are obfuscated in the PDF, usually without even any information about how to buy them.
- nneonneo 8y ago
  The list of font contributors can be found here: http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html. Choice quote: > The Unicode Consortium currently uses over 390 different fonts to publish the code charts and figures for The Unicode Standard. The overwhelming majority of these fonts are specially tailored for this purpose and have been donated to the Consortium with a restricted license for use in documenting the standard. You might be able to reach out to the vendors listed and try to buy the font, but it seems the majority were produced only for Unicode's use.

rspeer 8y ago

> So then it's just a matter of including a set of fonts that covers every character Have you ever tried to literally do this? You won't succeed. The Google Noto font family is getting there, but I think they're only caught up with like Unicode 6, and we're on Unicode 11 now. There are some recently-added scripts that you won't find in any font. The Unicode tables render them in proprietary fonts that are obfuscated in the PDF, usually without even any information about how to buy them.

nneonneo 8y ago
The list of font contributors can be found here: http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html http://www.unicode.org/charts/fonts.html. Choice quote: > The Unicode Consortium currently uses over 390 different fonts to publish the code charts and figures for The Unicode Standard. The overwhelming majority of these fonts are specially tailored for this purpose and have been donated to the Consortium with a restricted license for use in documenting the standard. You might be able to reach out to the vendors listed and try to buy the font, but it seems the majority were produced only for Unicode's use.