I cannot find anything that specially indicates what ranges of UniCode characters are available on an “I” device.
For example I can display unicode character 01F3C6 (a trophy symbol), but NOT 01F0A1 {which is “Ace of Spades”)
without going thru trial and error… anyone know where I can find something that documents this.
Unicode version 6.0 was released in 2010 (and this is all part of that)… Unicode 8.0 is coming soon…
The Objective-C Runtime is using UTF-16, while Xojo is using UTF-8 for Text variables. Maybe that is the reason?
Mac OS X fetches Trophy from Emoji whatever the font displayed. It does the same with 01F0A1from the font that contain it. Now, why iOS does not remains a mystery.
Fonts have always been notoriously under documented, and until now, the only way to make sure is experimentation…
I have tried this in various languages, XOJO, Swift, Obj-C … so I need to know what iOS v8 knows in regards to unicode
Knowing the code point is one thing
Having a font that has a glyph for that code point is an entirely different matter
iOS may not have one
I realize this… strange this is… those fonts that are common to iOS and OSX… the OSX font DOES show the desired Glyph, its almost as if iOS as abbreviated versions (which is entirely likely I guess)
but the original question… is how to find out if iOS does or does not, without tons of manual experimention… I don’t want to waste hours to find out it can’t be done, when I could have spent hours devising an alternative. but conversely I don’t want to spend hours creating an alternative, if it can be done with a simple unicode character.
The only way to make sure is to load the font in a font editor, and look if it contains the said character.
Unfortunately, Mac OS X is a bit too smart in that it substitutes other fonts for a given character if it does not exist so &u01F0A1 appear for all fonts at iosfonts.com if you enter it. I know for a fact it is not in Arial, for instance, yet it shows. The trophy comes from Emoji and should not show for other fonts as well, yet it does.
You may want to download the demo Fontographer from http://old.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontographer/ so you can open a font and see for yourself if it contains a given character. I have no idea which font in Mac OS X has cards. In Windows, it is Segoe UI Symbol, but on Mac, neither symbol, nor WingDing or Webding has it.
While the font family might be similar there’s no assurance they both contain the same sets of glyphs
The iOS one might have a smaller implemented set
A handful of declares is the only way I can think of to load the specific glyph from a specific font and NOT do an substitution.
[quote=195583:@Norman Palardy]A handful of declares is the only way I can think of to load the specific glyph from a specific font and NOT do an substitution.
That will not work if the glyph is not present in the font.
ok… I have detemined that for OSX… the Playing Cards are in the “APPLE SYMBOLS” font
a font that doesn’t seem to be loaded as part of iOS
[quote=195585:@Dave S]ok… I have detemined that for OSX… the Playing Cards are in the “APPLE SYMBOLS” font
a font that doesn’t seem to be loaded as part of iOS[/quote]
You are right. It does contain the cards symbols, and it is not listed at iosfonts.com.
I have no idea what the EULA is for the Apple font but it could be nightmarish to use it in an app. You may want to use a custom font such as those listed there http://www.dafont.com/playing-cards.font
Thats kind of the point
You can tell if the glyph exists or not 
Omg. fontographer still runs?
Yes. It has been bought out by Fontlab a few years ago after years of neglect from Macromedia and is now version 5.2.
Very little to do with the PPC versions 