Availability
For displaying a Unicode character, it must be present in the chosen font. The availability of a specific character depends on its presence in the specified font; every font has its own number of characters, or even none at all. Most characters will not be available. If a desired character is not present in the available fonts, a suitable font should be installed on the system. The character can be displayed on the system now, but if it is a more or less exotic one, it will not be visible on many other systems. An empty box, a question mark or another replacement will be shown: �.
Older web browsers can only display text supported by the current font associated with the character encoding of the page. Some modern browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer (version ≥ 7), are able to display multilingual web pages by intelligently choosing a font to display each individual character on the page. They will correctly display any mix of Unicode blocks, as long as appropriate fonts are present in the operating system. After installation of a missing font the browser will find the correct Unicode character automatically after restart.
Read more about this topic: Unicode Input
Famous quotes containing the word availability:
“Since ... six weeks ago, there has been no day in which I have not had letters and visits on the subject of my nomination for the Presidency.... I say very little. I have in no instance encouraged any one to work to that end.... I have said the whole talk about me is on the score of availability. Let availability do the work then.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)