Inspiring

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Copying glyphs except the Glyph panel into the InDesign document?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 6, 2023
3 replies
1430 views

Hello,

I'm working on a lengthy document and require approximately 30 colorful emojis. After considering options, I decided to use the Noto Color Emoji . While this font is excellent and features large glyphs, navigating through the Glyph panel on my PC's weak hardware has proven challenging. When scrolling through the Glyph panel to view and select emojis, it causes significant lag, requiring a wait of around 20 seconds to see the next row of glyphs After three hours!

I could only view a small portion of the list, making the task tedious. Is there an alternative method to view the font's glyphs outside of InDesign, allowing me to select and copy my preferred emojis for pasting into an InDesign document? The Google Noto emoji font is already installed. I'm unsure how to address this issue given my outdated PC with limited hardware (4GB RAM), and I don't have access to a more powerful machine for this task.

Thank you in advance.

Masoud

How to

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Correct answer Masoud Moghaddam

Not online Character Map - Windows have built-in version.

If you don't mind working with ID 2019 in the current configuration - then the cheapest and quickest upgrade would be to increase the amount of RAM - then ssd.

Apologies for the confusion earlier. I've since navigated Character Map, opting for Noto Color Emoji. However, it displays only a portion of glyphs when I adjust the "Group By" drop-down menu to All—quite peculiar. Nevertheless, I stumbled upon a helpful app - PopChar- during a trial run (though some glyphs are inaccessible and deactivate randomly in trial mode, making copying impossible). I managed to copy specific Noto Color Emoji glyphs and pasted them into ID's document. The performance is smooth without any big lag, and this app exhibits all characters and glyphs. When I select a pasted emoji in ID, the Glyphs panel pops-up and show the select emoji or glyph. Then, I can put it in a set of favorite glyphs I made for later.

Right now, I'm thinking PopChar is what I need. It lets me quickly see, scroll smoothly, and easily pick the glyphs I want to copy into ID.😃

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

4GB?!?!?! It's not enough for windows alone...

RAM is cheap as chips - you should really update ASAP... Unless it's a laptop...

Your HDD must have high mileage... And SSD won't survive for too long either...

You must be working with some old

InDesign - CS6? CS5? 2.0.2?

Latest CC won't even install?

Have you tried CharMap - system app?

Masoud MoghaddamAuthor

Inspiring

Yes, the hardware is outdated and not very powerful, but the main problem here is browsing and navigating through a heavy font that includes color emojis, causing the whole process to slow down. However, InDesign 2019 functions normally without crashing, albeit with a bit of lag. I am contemplating investing in a new PC and upgrading all its components.

I attempted to use an online Character Map, but it was confusing, and I couldn't figure out how to upload a font to view characters. I'm now looking for another character managers to test and see the results.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Not online Character Map - Windows have built-in version.

If you don't mind working with ID 2019 in the current configuration - then the cheapest and quickest upgrade would be to increase the amount of RAM - then ssd.

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

My favorite tool for this kind of task is called "BabelMap" and it's so incredibly old that I am sure it will run just fine on your machine.

Masoud MoghaddamAuthor

Inspiring

This small app appears to be handy, but when I choose the emoji font, the table displays in this manner, and I cannot see the appropriate emoji as the Glyphs panel does for selection. Is there a need to adjust specific settings to display emojis properly that I may not be aware of?

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

Well! Neither BabelMap nor InDesign was happy with Noto Color Emoji. I can't guess why, but both crashed when I tried to navigate to the "Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs" which is a block where a bunch of these emoji are located. You can find it on the left side, close to the bottom, under "Select Unicode Block." In your screenshot, you're in the CJK Unified Ideographs block, which I don't believe has any emoji in it.

Oddly enough, BabelMap worked just fine with both Noto Emoji and Segoe UI Emoji, so I can't guess why Noto Color Emoji is such a problem. It's also a problem in InDesign, as you already know.

So, one way you could pull this off would be to use the online version of BabelMap, which is just another Unicode code point picking tool. You could go there (https://babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/babelmap.html), pull down the dropdown and navigate to the Misc Symbols block, then browse to your heart's content. When you've found the perfect emoji, you copy it to your clipboard and paste it into InDesign, where - yes - it comes in as a dropped character, an X-ed out block of tofu. Then you mark that text with Noto Color Emoji, and it works just fine and renders your chosen emoji.

Very slowly.

Maybe you could pick some other color emoji font to work in, one that causes fewer crashes in your layout tool of choice, and then in the very final stage of the project use Type -> Find and Replace Fonts to replace whatever you're using with Noto Color Emoji?

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

That's the reason most fonts don't have 100,000 glyphs, or multicolor ones. 🙂

All I can suggest is that you create a document with the emojis you're using, from which you could cut and paste the one you want for each instance. Keep that doc open and positioned out of the way.

There might be other solutions using scripts, editing the font itself down to a subset version, or key mapping, but I suspect the effort involved would greatly exceed the effort needed to complete this project.

Masoud MoghaddamAuthor

Inspiring

I considered the initial solution, but the issue, as mentioned, is my inability to swiftly navigate and scroll down the Glyph panel to quickly view and select emojis. It takes a considerable amount of time (I could only pick a few before closing it).

Frankly, I lack the expertise and time for the second solution. Perhaps I should explore the option of finding a lighter emoji color font. I had hoped we could utilize and directly paste such fonts into an InDesign document from the web, but it appears to be impossible due to technical limitations. Thank you James for your suggestions.

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