Re: Font Encoding Problem

["Mark Hadfield" <m.hadfield(at)niwa.cri.nz>]

"David Fanning" <davidf@dfanning.com> wrote in message
MPG.140773c4312406f8989be4@news.frii.com">news:MPG.140773c4312406f8989be4@news.frii.com...
> I'm trying to figure out how to produce not a percent sign (o/o),
> but a perthousand sign (o/oo) in IDL. I can find the character
> on my computer. It has a Unicode of 2030 in the Times New Roman
> true-type font I have on my computer.
>
> Any ideas on how I can convert this into something I can display
> on an IDL plot?

Having made sure you have the right font selected and that formatting
commands are enabled, etc, represent the percent sign with !Z(2030).

The !Z format code *is* described in the documentation--that's where I
stumbled on it--but right now I can't find it again. Anyway, its use is
pretty straightforward.

> What is the Unicode, anyway!?

Roughly speaking--Unicode gurus may want to elaborate--a system for
displaying almost a vast range of standard characters using 16-bit integers.
The key thing to remember about Unicode is that you don't switch fonts to
display special characters. Instead all the characters are represented (or
at least space is reserved for them) in each font. Few fonts support the
whole Unicode character set, but a subset called WGL4 is widely supported.

 See:

http://www.unicode.org/
http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/

The latter has a list of Unicode-enabled fonts for different platforms.

---
Mark Hadfield
m.hadfield@niwa.cri.nz  http://katipo.niwa.cri.nz/~hadfield/
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research
PO Box 14-901, Wellington, New Zealand