How to use Wingdings font in Java Swing

Question

When I try to use the Wingdings font (or other symbol fonts), the text comes out as rectangles instead of the correct text. How do I get the correct characters to show?

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class WingdingsFontDisplay extends JFrame
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new WingdingsFontDisplay();
    }

    public WingdingsFontDisplay()
    {
        this.setSize(500,150);
        this.setTitle("Fun with Fonts");
        this.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

        //This shows that I do have "Wingdings" available
        GraphicsEnvironment g;
        g = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
        String[] fonts = g.getAvailableFontFamilyNames();
        for(String f : fonts)
        {
            System.out.println(f);
        }

        //Displaying text in the Wingdings font shows rectangles
        JLabel wingdingsText = new JLabel("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy");
        Font f1 = new Font("Wingdings", Font.PLAIN, 14);
        wingdingsText.setFont(f1);
        this.add(wingdingsText, BorderLayout.NORTH);

        //Displaying text in Arial works correctly
        JLabel arialText = new JLabel("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy");
        Font f2 = new Font("Arial", Font.PLAIN, 14);
        arialText.setFont(f2);
        this.add(arialText, BorderLayout.SOUTH);

        this.setVisible(true);
    }
}

Answer 1

You need to use the appropriate Unicode range for the symbols you seek. In Java, symbols are not overlaid on the ASCII range, but have their own distinct character codes.

You can find a reference to the appropriate symbol codes at http://unicode.org/~asmus/web-wing-ding-ext.pdf . Most common symbols are in the 0x2200 and 0x2700 Unicode ranges.

Your Java install may include the SymbolTest sample applet, which makes it straightforward to preview the presentation of Unicode ranges with available fonts. Be warned, however, that better Java implementations will use font substitutions for symbols or characters not in the specified font, so you'll want to be sure you're actually getting the specified font.