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I have an arrowsbe.txt file, with the following content (in hex):

FE FF 00 41 00 42 00 43 2B A1 00 20 2B A2

You see, it is UTF-16BE encoded, with BOM at file start. There are two not-so-often seen Unicode characters in it, U+2BA1 and U+2BA2.

On my Windows 7, those two Unicode glyphs each displays as a hollow box with a question mark in it.

Windows 7 showing U+2BA1 and U+2BA2 as boxes

On Windows 10 (21H2), they display correctly.

Windows 10 showing U+2BA1 and U+2BA2 correctly

This is not a matter of font selection. I have tried Arial, Tahoma, Segoe UI, SimSun etc, the results are the same, except that… some fonts display the hollow box without a question mark in it.

Is there way to display those two Unicode glyphs in Windows 7 Notepad? Perhaps by installing some special .TTF font file?

BTW: On Windows 7, those two boxed glyphs does not show up in other applications as well, e.g., Explorer address bar, Internet Explorer 11 text area, Chrome 109 etc.

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The issue comes from the fact that the default font set in Windows 7 does not support these characters.

You must install a third-party font, such as Code2000, Symbola, and Unifont; these all support these Unicode characters. Once this font is installed select it in Notepad, and these characters should display correctly.

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  • Thank you very much. I tried Symbola and GNU Unifont, they do provide U+2BA1 and U+2BA2, and now they display well in Notepad. Code2000 does not have those two yet.
    – Jimm Chen
    Commented Mar 9, 2023 at 7:24

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