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Is it a Unicode Font?

To determine if your font is Unicode-compliant, with all its characters coded and mapped correctly, choose the Font in any program (or in Font Book, set the preview area to Custom (Preview > Custom), and type Option-Shift-2.

If you get a euro character (a sort of uppercase C with two horizontal lines through its midsection), it's 99.9 percent certain the font is Unicode-compliant. If you get a graphic character that's gray rounded-rectangle frame with a euro character inside it, the font is definitely not Unicode-compliant. (The fact that the image has a euro sign in it is only coincidental: it's the image used for any missing currency sign.)

This assumes that you're using U.S. input keyboard, which is a little ironic when the euro symbol is the test. With the British keyboard, for instance, Option-2 produces the euro symbol if it's part of the font.

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Inside TidBITS | 29 Mar 2010 | Listen  | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article | Comment (5)

SmileOnMyMac Joins Long-Term TidBITS Sponsors

by Adam C. Engst Send Email to Author

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We're extremely happy to welcome as our latest long-term sponsor SmileOnMyMac, makers of PDFpen, TextExpander, DiscLabel, and PageSender. What's especially pleasing about having SmileOnMyMac joining our select group of sponsors is that we've known the principals - Greg Scown, Philip Goward, and Jean MacDonald - for many years, and we've watched as SmileOnMyMac has grown into one of the most well-known utility companies in the Macintosh software space.

That growth has come thanks to a combination of highly useful programs and an eye toward meeting the needs of Mac users who demand more than Apple provides. iTunes may be able to print CD inserts and song lists, but DiscLabel goes the next step and enables you to print directly on discs in a variety of ways and with a variety of professionally designed templates. Preview may be able to view and annotate PDFs, and perform a modicum of page-level editing tasks, but PDFpen goes well beyond what Preview can do at a fraction of Acrobat Pro's $449 cost. Mac OS X offers faxing capabilities, but if you want to do things like resend faxes, integrate with faxing services, and automate faxing, PageSender turns your Mac into a professional-level fax solution. And lastly, though Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard offers basic text substitution, TextExpander adds capabilities like support for inserting graphics, snippet syncing, fill-in-the-blank variables, and much more (not to mention being able to access your snippet library on an iPhone or iPod touch via the TextExpander touch app). TextExpander even includes the 2,400-word TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary for common misspellings.

We're long-time users of some of SmileOnMyMac's software too - PDFpen plays an important role in the creation of our PDF-based Take Control ebooks, and whenever we want to burn a Take Control Library CD to give out at user group meeting, we turn to DiscLabel. And we're not alone in appreciating these products - PDFpen, DiscLabel, and PageSender have all earned Eddy awards from Macworld, and DiscLabel also won a Best of Show award at Macworld Expo in its debut year.

Thanks to SmileOnMyMac for their support of TidBITS and the Mac community!

 

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Comments about SmileOnMyMac Joins Long-Term TidBITS Sponsors

GeorgeR  2010-03-29 15:02
I am sorry to hear this. I've had negative experiences with company's products. I do not wish to hear their name or see their ads, so I drop every blog and service that they sponsor. I have been a reader of TidBits for more years than I care to admit. But when it comes to principles one can't be a little bit pregnant. Good luck to the Engst family and all associates.
Adam Engst  An apple icon for a TidBITS Staffer 2010-03-29 15:23
Very sorry to hear that, George, and I'm surprised, since it's so completely in contrast to our experience. Heck, years ago, when I asked about how to do something in PDFpen, Greg Scown wrote me a custom script that did exactly what I needed. If you have specific issues, I'm more than happy to serve as go-between in helping to get them resolved.
Glenn Fleishman  2010-03-29 15:48
No one can talk you out of what you experienced (or know all the details), and I'm sorry to see you go. All of my experience with SmileOnMyMac and the staff there has been insanely positive, starting years before I ever wrote about a single product and was a regular customer.
Greg Scown  An apple icon for a Friend of TidBITS 2010-03-30 06:55
I'm sorry to hear you had a negative experience with our products. Did you contact support? Were we unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction? If not, by all means get in touch: support@smileonmymac.com. We provide fast and friendly support, and we take that seriously.
Drummond Reed  2010-03-30 01:02
All I can say is that while I'm a brand new SmileOnMyMac customer, using TextExpander, I honestly can't live without it, and it runs circles around Word's AutoCorrect Feature. And their service has been incredible. So count me as a devout fan. I hope GeorgeR's experience is an outlier.