Solved Pasting Unicode Text in JPEG

[JimChw]

I am trying to insert unicode text into a JPEG image, however, certain characters display as a box. I've been able to do this successfully in the past. Specifically, I'm using the JazzText font. The "flat" symbol doesn't want to correctly display. I'm not sure what has changed.

I'm using the newest version 4.60 64-bit

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

The # character is a placeholder code; so try typing $#: See Help:

$# - add one '#' character (otherwise is # used for numbers/counters)

[JimChw]

The placeholder $# seems to be for the filename or metadata. I don't see how it applies to text entered in the Insert Text function. Does this show the issue more clearly?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

If you could provide a link to download the JazzText font, I can look at it, but I cannot reproduce the issue with other fonts by typing a # character in the Insert Text dialog of Irfan Paint.

[JimChw]

The help text on placeholders is unclear about how $# is used in the Insert Text dialog. Can you provide an example?

Try this font link: https://www.wfonts.com/font/jazztext

[Kuki Dent]

The font jazztext.ttf does not contain any musical symbols. You need to find a font that has these symbols.


I used BabelMap to show the fonts and IrfanView to make the sccreenshots and the image composition.

[JimChw]

Interesting. I've been using the Windows Character Mapping app to view the fonts. Here's where I'm copying the text from to paste into the InsertText dialog.



There's more to fonts than I guessed. I'm still a bit puzzled. Thanks for your help so far. While I can get a Music Flat Sign from another font, it definitely looks different. I think you've put me on a learning path. Unless someone else chimes in, I think we can table this thread for now.

[j7n]

In this exact font file linked the symbols are assigned to positions within the Western codepage, as it was done before Unicode:

- Double Low-9 Quotation Mark -> „
- Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent -> ˆ

Maybe some font magic of modern Windows doesn't let them come through. I also see that the character set box is grayed out for you.

Possible workarounds: Copy these symbols from another font, then scroll to JazzText within the dialog. Or use Edit -> Insert Text command instead of the IrfanPaint dialog.

There is no connection to the # (number sign, pound sign). The symbol code and design are different.

[Kuki Dent]

There's something interesting with this font. When I look for 0x84 (dezimal 132) in Babelmap (which only shows Unicode), there's only an empty rectangle,
which means that no Unicode character is assinged to this place. However, if I use Jazztext in LibreOffice, I get this:

If you use the keycode as shown above, you will get the flat sign in Irfanview, though it does not show in the dialogue window:

[j7n]

Unicode matches Western only in part. The advanced punctuation marks are up in a separate block. 0x84 is for a control character. It is possible that this has caused an issue in Win 8/10 for the OP. His Charmap seems to treat this as a Unicode-incapable font because the box is disabled.

OP make sure you are using this exact font file you linked, not another font by the same name.

[JimChw]

I re-downloaded the font I posted and used the ALT-0132 shortcut (hex 84 = decimal 132) and that worked. Pasting from Character Map did not work. Pasting from BabelMap did not work (if I did it right). I believe my problem is solved. Thank you all for your help