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Is it a Unicode Font?

To determine if your font is Unicode-compliant, with all its characters coded and mapped correctly, choose the Font in any program (or in Font Book, set the preview area to Custom (Preview > Custom), and type Option-Shift-2.

If you get a euro character (a sort of uppercase C with two horizontal lines through its midsection), it's 99.9 percent certain the font is Unicode-compliant. If you get a graphic character that's gray rounded-rectangle frame with a euro character inside it, the font is definitely not Unicode-compliant. (The fact that the image has a euro sign in it is only coincidental: it's the image used for any missing currency sign.)

This assumes that you're using U.S. input keyboard, which is a little ironic when the euro symbol is the test. With the British keyboard, for instance, Option-2 produces the euro symbol if it's part of the font.

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Media Creation | 11 Dec 2007 | Listen   | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article

Get DivX Pro for Free for a Limited Time

by Adam C. Engst Send Email to Author

[19-Dec-07: The offer has apparently now expired, sorry! -Adam]

For an unspecified limited time, DivX is giving away free serial numbers to their DivX Pro software, which makes it possible to create DivX-encoded videos on the Mac (a Windows version is also available). DivX is a compressed digital media format for video, much as MP3 and AAC are compressed digital media formats for audio. Read all about it on Wikipedia if you're interested in the gory details.

Normally $19.99, DivX Pro for Mac is a bundle of four applications, DivX Player (for playing DivX videos on the Mac), DivX Web Player (for extending playback functionality to the Web), DivX Pro Codec (necessary for encoding video in DivX format), and DivX Converter (the application that works with the codec to create DivX videos).

If you don't create video at all, there's nothing wrong with downloading the free version of DivX Pro, but you can get just the parts you need to play DivX-encoded videos for free any time. The DivX for Mac bundle includes the DivX Player, DivX Web Player, and the DivX Community Codec, which I gather can only decode DivX video, with encoding being restricted to the DivX Pro Codec.

 

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