Skip to main content
Roger Breton
Roger Breton
Brainiac
October 24, 2024
Question

How Comprehensive is InDesign's Support for the Unicode Standard?

  • October 24, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 1063 views

I watched an InDesignSecrets video on YouTube called "Zero-width space" :

InDesign How-To: Use a Zero Width Space (Video Tutorial)

I admit I was impressed by what the use of this character can do in terms of typography.

I looked around for more information. 
I quickly landed on Wifipedia which was helpful.

But then I landed on the "Unicode Standard"? Which I didn't know existed.

I confess my ignorance in typgraphy.

I have yet to experiment with a Zero-width space in an InDesign document -- I will.

Since the use of this "character" is suported (see above video) makes me wonder :

A) Will it have some kind of representation with Show Invisible Characcters?
B) And it makes me wonder what are the other kinds of space characters that are out there?
C) Whether they're all supported in InDesign?
Hence the subject of my broader inquiry, how "complete" is InDesign support for Unicode?

Super interesting question 🙂
Thank you all for helping in advance.

 

 

<Title renamed by MOD>

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Brad @ Roaring Mouse
Brad @ Roaring Mouse
Community Expert
October 25, 2024

The zero width Character (i.e. Unicode 200B) is merely a Discretionary Line Break. This IS in the Insert Break Character menu despite what he says in his video, like so:

 

It's also represented in a Text search as "^k" or in GREP search as "~k", so your search query only needs to look like this: e.g. GREP search:

 

The blue line is InDesign's way to show you that particular hidden character where they are (same as a paragraph return or tab mark, etc).

 

Unicode has been around for many many years now. Most fonts now are Unicode fonts, allowing thousands of characters (e.g. a TrueType font could have 65,535), but you won't find U200B as a character you can "see" in a font file; it's more of an instruction.

    Roger Breton
    Roger BretonAuthor
    Brainiac
    October 25, 2024

    I did a search on "Discretionary Line Break" and found this in InDesign Help:

    Indicates where a line of text should break if the line needs to break. 
    I fail to grasp what that does to the composition, Brad? Here is my example:

    There are Conditional Line breaks between each characters. I just can't put down in words how the presence of this character in the text is being processed by the composition engine : is it "keeping the lines from breaking"? Is that what it does?

     

    Is it keeping the lines from hyphenatig?

     

    leo.r
    leo.r
    Community Expert
    October 25, 2024
    quote

    I just can't put down in words how the presence of this character in the text is being processed by the composition engine : is it "keeping the lines from breaking"?


    By @Roger Breton

     

    it allows your line to break when needed. try to remove them - how will your line look without discretionary line breaks?

    Roger Breton
    Roger BretonAuthor
    Brainiac
    October 24, 2024

    Made some progress with regards to Zero-width space support. 

    The following is a screen capture of two text frames containing the same A to Z 26 letters alphabet.

    This is with Text > Show Hidden Characters ON.

    Do you see the large blue diagonal lines between each characters?

    I wonder if this "blue character" is specific for this Unicode character?
    Or is it "generic"?

    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Brainiac
    October 25, 2024

    @Roger Breton

     

    InDesign is an Unicode app.

     

    Here you can find a list of all "hidden" symbols:

     

    https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/indesign/using/editing-text.html

     

    And here you can find some PDFs with more special characters:

     

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/is-there-an-up-to-date-guide-to-hidden-characters/td-p/14014605

     

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices