Missing Unicode symbols in Release 7.1.8.9375512768
Gwynevery Resident
Paste these symbols into the chat window and they now appear as blocks (unknown font symbols):
⯈ ⯇ ⯅ ⯆ ️🛇
Log In
Jovigirl Paule
Please give me my symbols back i miss them and its hard when hosting coz u cant see what people r saying
RBQuinn Resident
First, the number of missing symbols is substantially underestimated. I can contribute solid square, checked box, and left and right arrows with long stems.
Second, the principle of backward compatibility is very important: a viewer should not change so that things stop working that are already made.
I have a piece of software that is critical for what I do, the software is now almost useless, and everything I have created is substantially impaired. It's for visitors to use, and absolutely essential menu options are now blank squares. I understand this would be relatively easy to fix if I had the script, which I don't, or if I could contact the scripter, which I cannot.
Please, do the right thing.
-- Christina Halpin and RBQuinn
Xen042 Resident
Hello, coming from Firestorm, only just noticing this issue as it was pointed out to me by players.
Not as ubiquitous as the other examples of missing unicode icons, but we use the celtic cross 🕈 as a spacer in my sim's roleplay titler. In the latest version of Firestorm this icon is no longer supported, leaving us with a box. I'd prefer better support for more unicode characters over emojis.
Image 1: Picture of titler from months ago
Image 2: Recent picture of titler.
Logan Elf
On Windows, the
Segoe UI
set of fonts provides extensive coverage of Unicode, with Segoe UI Symbols
(seguisym.ttf) providing the black triangles and prohibited symbol. However, Microsoft don't licence the full set of Segoe UI
fonts, only a subset (and Segoe UI Symbols
is one of those that are not licenced). So using seguisym.ttf as a fallback would be a Windows-only solution.Google's
Noto
font set can be used on all platforms, and has Noto Sans Symbols
, Noto Sans Symbols 2
and Noto Sans Math
which can be used to provide the extra Unicode characters. Noto Sans Symbols
(but not the other two) also is available in Bold
, Italic
and Bold Italic
styles, which can make for a cleaner look over "fake" bolding/italicizing.Not necessary, but if consistency is desired
DejaVu Sans
could also be replaced by Noto Sans
.
Atlas Linden
open
Atlas Linden
Thanks all for the extra info!
It appears that FS has recently changed their font to be more aligned with LL which explains why users are only beginning to see this issue. It also seems these exact symbols (fallback-fonts) mentioned did not work in previous LL viewers (at least it didn't in the last 2 years).
This Canny report is hence being moved to the Feature request board.
Atlas Linden
Hi Gwynevery,
We've been unable to produce these symbols in a pre-emoji viewer (Maintenance U). However, we have found similar arrow symbols that appear to work as expected ►◄▲▼
Are you aware of the No-entry unicode symbol working in a previous viewer?
Frionil Fang
Atlas Linden I can confirm 🛇 working in Firestorm 7.1.9.74745, and this bug was reported the pre-release version of theirs as well which unified some font handling with the LL viewer.
I can fix the missing characters by transplanting a system font fallback from the release Firestorm version to Second Life Viewer 7.1.9.10326512121 or the pre-release Firestorm version. As said, this is a system font on Windows, not one of the fonts bundled with the viewer.
SecondLifeViewer\skins\default\xui\en\fonts.xml, add this line below msyh.ttc:
<file>seguisym.ttf</file>
This change fixes ⯈ ⯇ ⯅ ⯆ ️🛇 as well as ⮬⮯, but not ⸻.
Gwynevery Resident
Atlas Linden: Unfortunately it is some time ago that I checked the LL Viewer; a friend complained about missing symbols in his viewer (3y ago, Marines TPV). I checked this with FS and the LL Viewer back then and they were visible; so I didn't care about that much.
But now as I see Frionils comment, that FS as well as the former LL Viewer used a Windows fall back font, things seem to make sense. "Most" people saw it because of the "silent" fallback.
I checked the symbols on https://symbl.cc/en/unicode-table
The missing symbols(including Krystys below) are in unicode block u+2b00..ff (miscellaneous-symbols-and-arrows)
⯈ U+2BC8
⯇ U+2BC7
⯅ U+2BC5
⯆ U+2BC6
⮬ U+2BAC
⮯ U+2BAF
Since there at the lower end (2 byte) of unicode, I assumed that they should be "naturally" available. ^^
The 🛇 (U+1F6C7) or the 🚫(U+1F6AB) are special ( transport-and-map-symbols). The black one (U+1F6C7) was visible before and now it seems that this has been replaced by the red one(U+1F6AB) , which is visible now. ^^
The "⸻" from Krysty is the "3M dash (U+2E3B, supplemental-punctuation). I never used that, but noticed that it isn't visible in Windows Notepad too (maybe because of it's non-proportional font)?
So, welcome to the unicode tower of babel. ^^.
Logan Elf
Gwynevery Resident Most of the standard Windows supplied fonts don't support U+2E3B including
Consolas
which is Notepad's default font.Of the ones I checked, only
Segoe UI
, Tahoma
and Times New Roman
have U+2E3B, and whilst they can be used for Notepad, are proportional.Kristy Aurelia
I've been noticing missing Unicode characters as well, in 7.1.9.10326512121 including ⮬⮯ ⸻
I can't remember in which official version they worked in last, but they are fine in Alchemy viewer 7.1.9.2492
I am using the default Deja Vu font.
These symbols and similar ones are important because people use them as icons for dialog menus and such, so it breaks existing content too.
Atlas Linden
Hi Kristy,
Are you able to provide an example on some content that has recently broken due to this no longer appearing?
I've gone as far back to a 6.6.2 SL viewer and the symbols are still missing.
Kristy Aurelia
Atlas Linden Yeah, https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Kristys-Headphones-RLV/24534706 uses the 🛇 in the menus under certain conditions. As well as scripts I've been working for a while for my next product that stopped showing those characters.
I mainly use Firestorm, so I'm not sure which version of the official viewer caused it to break. As I saw it stop working in FS, then tried the official viewer and saw it broken there as well. However, I think a pre-mirror update version might be old enough work.
Edit: oh and this item uses the ⸻ (not made by me, also A rated) https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/NGW-Central-Zyp-Hood-box/24221609
Edit 2: the characters are broken in chat as well well as dialogs, so you don't really need the items to reproduce it, and you can make a script that opens a dialog with unicode in the button names.
Dan Linden
under review