Attempting to use symbol fonts (such as "Wingdings" in Windows) results in square rectangles or incorrect characters appearing in Omniscope. This occurs throughout - for example, in cell data, field names, the Content view, and view footers.

This is because Omniscope only supports the Unicode character set, whereas Wingdings (and others such as Webdings and Wingdings3) are not Unicode fonts.

Copying and pasting characters from non-Unicode fonts in Windows "Character Map" results in the wrong character pasted, because the Omniscope incorrectly interprets the pasted characters as Unicode.

In Windows "Character Map", you can tell a font is non-Unicode because the status bar doesn't show the Unicode character code such as "U+0021". Instead it shows an internal character code such as "Character Code: 0x21".

(Further, the font menus in Omniscope show the name of symbol fonts incorrectly, attempting to display them using the font itself, which does not contain glyphs for the characters in the font name. Such fonts should be listed in the menu using another font, plus example glyphs present in the font itself.)

Known workarounds for inserting symbol characters into Omniscope:

• Use Unicode symbols in normal/other fonts
  
  1. In Windows "Character Map", select "Font: Arial Unicode MS" and "Group by: Unicode Subrange".
     
  2. In the "Group By" popup that appears, choose "Symbols & Dingbats" (or "Arrows", etc., as required).
     
  3. Now select and copy characters as usual into Omniscope.
     
  4. Depending on the font and symbol choice, the symbols may display immediately; if not, switch Omniscope to use Arial Unicode MS. You can do this throughout Omniscope using "Settings > File font" or individually in a Content view or other rich text field.
     
  
  
• Insert character codes in symbol fonts (rich text fields only)
  
  1. In Windows "Character Map", select the symbol font, e.g. Wingdings.
     
  2. Click the symbol you want - e.g. the 2nd symbol (✂, "black scissors").
     
  3. In the status bar at the bottom, note the character code - e.g. 0x22.
     
  4. In the Omniscope rich text field (e.g. the Content view), start editing.
     
  5. Enter some arbitrary text, e.g. "X", and set the font for "X" e.g. to Wingdings ("X" may appear as a rectangle).
     
  6. Click the "<> Edit Html Source" icon, and replace "X" with "&#xF022;" for code 0x22, "&#xF023;" for code 0x23, etc.
     (This is a special "private use area" Unicode character code range for non-Unicode fonts, in hexadecimal).
     
  7. Click the "<> Edit Html Source" icon again to switch back to rich text editing.
     
  
  
• Convert Wingdings codes to Unicode (rich text fields only)
  
  1. In Windows "Character Map", select the symbol font, e.g. Wingdings.
     
  2. Click the symbol you want - e.g. the 2nd symbol (✂, "black scissors").
     
  3. In the status bar at the bottom, note the character code - e.g. 0x22.
     
  4. Visit this table and look up the code (e.g. 22) in the Hex column. Check the "Chr" column, and note the "Code" column. For example, 0x22 maps to code 9986.
     (This is the Unicode character code, in decimal.)
     
  5. In the Omniscope rich text field (e.g. the Content view), start editing.
     
  6. Enter some arbitrary text, e.g. "X". You may also need to set the font for "X" to "Arial Unicode MS".
     
  7. Click the "<> Edit Html Source" icon, and replace "X" with "&#9986;" for symbol code 0x22 / Unicode 9986, etc.
     
  8. Click the "<> Edit Html Source" icon again to switch back to rich text editing.
     
  
  

This idea comprises some or all of:

• Detecting symbol fonts pasted from "Character Map", and automatically inserting the correct codes and fonts/styles, as appropriate / where possible, in the Content View and other rich-text and plain-text fields.
  
• An "Insert symbol/character" button/dialog within Omniscope rich text editors, similar to "Character Map", showing all symbols available in a given font.
  
• Automatically correcting keystrokes which normally insert symbols in Wingdings, etc., in other applications such as Word, so they are converted/mapped to the equivalent Unicode in Omniscope (if possible).
  
• Correcting the display of symbol font names in font menus.