Hi, sometimes i come across question-mark symbols or "box" shapes with numerals inside of them, suggesting a missing glyph/character relating to unicode rendering.

I'm wondering why can't i render these characters?

For example; this wikipedia page mentions unicode characters relating to Egyptian hieroglyphs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypti...(Unicode_block)

All of the symbols in the chart show up as square boxes with the numbered code inside of them. How can i get support for these to render? How do i know which version of "unicode" is supported by my OS and how would i update it to add support for missing characters?

I'm running slackware -current at the moment, and typically use firefox for web browsing.

It depends which font you use. Obviously not every font will have all 40,000 or so characters.

if i understand how fontconfig works, all your registered fonts together would need to be able to display ALL possible unicode characters (there's quite a few nowadays, even colored ones).
in reality, i think that most fonts provide the same limited subset.
so maybe try to get one font in there that "specializes" in unicode characters?

The question-mark in a diamond indicates a mistake: a number that's not a recognised code. The box just mean that you haven't got that character in any of your fonts.

There are no fonts than can deal with every language: after all, how often do you need Tifinagh, or even hieroglyphs? There are some that come close
http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/
lists some pan-unicode fonts. None are complete and all are large: GNU Unifont is 12 MB and still hasn't got to Egyptian!
http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html

1 members found this post helpful.

Ok thanks all. So the solution is to find a font that supports specific characters.