KWord 1.6.3 will list all the Unicode points in pages of 256. So, if you have a font known to include the Unicode points you want, install it and use KWord to identify the points and page(s) on which it occurs. Once you know this you should be able to identify other fonts that include the required characters, if necessary, by installing them and using KWord to check if they contain the required characters.
I have Thryomanes from the South Asia Language Center.
Thanks for the input.
gucharmap will tell you if it finds glyphs for a certain code point, but it does not reveal in which font it was found. You can choose a font in gucharmap, but it is only a preference and for a code point not available in the specified font it will fall back to another font that has it (as all applications should do).
So I can still not find out what a specific font does have (except when I deinstall all other fonts, which is a bit rigorous). My main aim, do I have a glypf for a specific code point, is covered by gucharmap.
I am certain that KWord will fullfill my main aim, but I have to install and test it to see if it identifies which (can be several) font has a glyph (and how does it look like) for a code point.
OO does privide some help here. You can go to “Insert special characters”, where you can choose a font. You are only presented by the glyphs in that font then. This is again usefull for inspecting a font, but when you want to insert a code point only, you have to choose all fonts one by one and then check if that code point is covered.
Again, thanks for the input.
I mentioned KWord 1.6.3 because I don’t know if this is in KWord 2 yet. But it sounds as if it may indeed be the easiest way to find out what you want. Just open an empty document and use Insert>Special character. Change the font to one you know has a desired Unicode point and scroll through the pages using what it calls the Table number (unless you know the point in hex in which case you can select it directly).
When you get to the desired point, simply change the font to any other one you have installed and, if the character is not in the font, you get a page of blanks.
If you hover over an unselected point, it gives the Unicode point in hex and decimal as well as the glyph for the selected font if available.
@john_hudson
Sounds good. Thanks a lot.
To all still following this out of curiousity.
I just loaded a the following page: Sanskrit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in both Konqueror and FF. It is clear that both use a different font from what I have available. In this case Konqui renders the second element of the third row of Vowels correct. It shows the combination ‘pi’ where the ‘i’ is written as a diacritical that comes **before **the ‘p’. FF does this wrong, the diacritical **follows **the ‘p’ and the result is a non existing glyph.
Most of you wiill not see the same thing, because you have most probably a different set of fonts in your system. It is a font error, not a FF bug.
In fact this behaviour is what the CODE2000 web page mentions:
Code2000 can populate charts for Oriya and Kannada — but can not yet properly display text in those scripts.
Now this is Devanagari and not Oriya or Kannada, but this is the sort of behaviour I expected reading the above statement.
As a result it means you have to make a choice. I thiink I will deinstall CODE2000 and stick to Lucida Sans and indic-fonts for my Devanagari and leave Gentium in for the Latin Extended Additional (the dotted ones). Konqui dos not see Gentium, but it does also not see CODE2000, so it does not matter. FF does see both, but CODE2000 seems to misplace some diacritics and Gentium gives what I was lacking. Only the SHORTVOWEL A may stay missing, but I never saw it used in Hindi, Nepali or any other modern Devanagari using language.