Re: Font evolution

From:
"John B. Matthews" <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sun, 03 Mar 2013 20:46:30 -0500
Message-ID:
<nospam-4AA284.20463003032013@news.aioe.org>
In article <slrnkj76o7.cmg.fredrik@biggles.jonson.org>,
 Fredrik Jonson <fredrik@jonson.org> wrote:

John B. Matthews wrote:

 Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> wrote:

What happens in Java apps when a glyph is missing from the
specified font?


 I think you're supposed to see a WHITE SQUARE, which "may be
 used to represent a missing ideograph."


I don't do Java GUI programming very often, but in logs and terminals
I regularily stumble upon U+FFFD in output from java code with broken
charset conversion. U+FFFD is the unicode replacement character and
is represented by a black rhomb with a white question mark inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%2BFFFD

class Sscce {
    static public void main(String[] arg) {
        String foo = new String(new byte[] { (byte) -1 });
        javax.swing.JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, foo);
    }
}


Good point; your example illustrates a declaration in
sun.font.CharToGlyphMapper, used by Font#canDisplay():

public??static??final??int??UNINITIALIZED_GLYPH??=??-1;

Here's a variation that show a typical page with spotty coverage on some
platforms:

import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

class Sscce {

    public static final int N = 16;
    public static final int BASE = 0x1D100; // Musical Symbols

    static public void main(String[] arg) {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                display();
            }
        });
    }

    private static void display() {
        JPanel p = new JPanel(new GridLayout(N, N));
        JLabel label = new JLabel("");
        Font f = label.getFont().deriveFont(36f);
        int[] a = new int[1];
        for (int r = 0; r < N; r++) {
            for (int c = 0; c < N; c++) {
                a[0] = N * r + c + BASE;
                label = new JLabel(new String(a, 0, 1));
                label.setFont(f);
                label.setToolTipText("\\u"
                    + Integer.toHexString(a[0])
                    + " " + f.canDisplay(a[0]));
                p.add(label);
            }
        }
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, p);
    }
}

Granted, I'm not sure it is entirely correct to equate a missing
ideograph with a unrepresentable chacacter?


I have a penchant for using an ideograph as a glyph, at least until it
turns up missing.

--
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>

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