Fetching all available characters of a font

[Martin Fischer]

I would like to build a genaral view of the available characters of a font.
Does anybody have an idea how to fetch them?

How can I iterate though unicode values?

And how can I check, whether a character with a specific unicode value is presentable with the applied font?

Thanks in advance
Martin Fischer

[_Robert_Tkaczyk_]

I think it's impossible to check if there is "real" character under specified unicode ... but maybe I'm wrong ;)

but ... maybe if you will create outline of each char and check if is empty (error when creating outline) or it is crossed or not rectangle ...

robin

--
www.adobescripts.com

[Martin Fischer]

Hi Robin,

> maybe if you will create outline of each char and check if is empty

Ah, good idea.

Thank you
Martin

[srakete]

Martin,

my first thought was the InDiCode Script:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc441ad

Maybe this will help

Stefan

[Martin Fischer]

Stefan,

what a wonderful stuff!

Thank you for pointing me to this link.
I should have remembered it.

Martin

[Peter Kahrel]

Martin,

You can cycle through Unicode ranges using their hexadecimal numbers:

for (i = 0x0100; i < 0x017F; i++)
$.writeln (String.fromCharCode(i));

writes the characters in Latin Extended A to ESTK's console.

Peter

[Martin Fischer]

Peter,

good to know this.
(I didn't yet).

Thank you
Martin

[Martin Fischer]

Maybe somebody is interested in another approach catching all available glyphs of a font.

We had a discussion in http://www.hilfdirselbst.ch/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=343195#343195
Bastian has told that not every glyph has a unicode value. So you have to choose another way to get every glyph of a font.

Only findGlyphPreference and changeGlyphPreference do have a property glyphID. So we have been looking for a way to get the glyphs over this preferences.

Here is a workaround to catch the glyphs:

var t = app.activeDocument.pages[0].textFrames.add({geometricBounds:[0,0,210,148] });

var myFont = 'Garamond Premier Pro\tItalic'; // 'Times New Roman\tRegular'; 'Minion Pro\tRegular'

var glyphCounter = 2555;

var s = t.parentStory;

var c = fillStory( s, glyphCounter );

app.findGlyphPreferences = app.changeGlyphPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;

app.findGlyphPreferences.glyphID = 1; // glyphID of space

app.findGlyphPreferences.appliedFont = app.changeGlyphPreferences.appliedFont = myFont;



for ( i = 1; i < c.length; i++ )

{

 app.changeGlyphPreferences.glyphID = i ;

 try { c.changeGlyph(); }

 catch(e) { errorExit( 'Stopped with glyph no. ' + i )}

}



function errorExit( aMessage )

{

  alert( aMessage );

  exit();

}



function fillStory( aStory, aCounter )

{

 aStory.contents = '';

 for ( i = 0; i < aCounter; i++ )

  aStory.insertionPoints[-1].contents = ' ';

 aStory.texts[0].appliedFont = myFont;

 return aStory.characters;

}

We have used the space as placeholder.
In some fonts the glyphID of the space is 1 in some other the glyphID is 2 and e.g. in Times New Roman the glyphID is 3.
Until now I did't find a way how to read out the glyphID of the space of one font. So you should adjust 'app.findGlyphPreferences.glyphID = 1;' in the script above.

I also could't find out how to get the length of glyphs of a font.
So you should adjust 'var glyphCounter' in the script above, too.

In UI one can insert a glyphID in the search-field with its unicode-value or with its GID/CID. You can switch the units.
I couldn't find out how to insert the value als unicode-value.
I would like to set the value for the search-glyphID for space in font-independent unicode-format '\u0020'.

Thanks
Martin