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BBO Suit Symbols


McBruce

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About a week before my computer failed to respond, I started getting weird looking suit symbols in bidding diagrams and chat on BBO. The new computer worked fine in this reapect for a while, but at some point I seem to have installed something that caused the problem again. A quick look at the Unicode symbols shows that I get the following for suit symbols:

 

SPADES: I get a superscripted and underlined lower case 'a'; Unicode character 00AA

HEARTS: I get a circled-c copyright symbol, Unicode character 00A9

DIAMONDS: I get an umlaut without a letter below it, Unicode character 00A8

CLUBS: I get a section sign, a capital S with a ring in the middle, Unicode character 00A7

 

The heart and diamond symbols are coloured red.

 

The correct Unicode characters for suit symbols are:

 

SPADES (solid): 2660

HEARTS (solid): 2665

DIAMONDS (solid): 2666

CLUBS (solid): 2663

 

(There are separate Unicode characters for hollow suit symbols, which is why the numbers are not ordered.)

 

To find a solution for this I imagine I would need to know exactly what BBO is sending when it sends suit symbols. Anyone know the answer to this problem?

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About a week before my computer failed to respond, I started getting weird looking suit symbols in bidding diagrams and chat on BBO. The new computer worked fine in this reapect for a while, but at some point I seem to have installed something that caused the problem again. A quick look at the Unicode symbols shows that I get the following for suit symbols:

 

SPADES: I get a superscripted and underlined lower case 'a'; Unicode character 00AA

HEARTS: I get a circled-c copyright symbol, Unicode character 00A9

DIAMONDS: I get an umlaut without a letter below it, Unicode character 00A8

CLUBS: I get a section sign, a capital S with a ring in the middle, Unicode character 00A7

 

The heart and diamond symbols are coloured red.

 

The correct Unicode characters for suit symbols are:

 

SPADES (solid): 2660

HEARTS (solid): 2665

DIAMONDS (solid): 2666

CLUBS (solid): 2663

 

(There are separate Unicode characters for hollow suit symbols, which is why the numbers are not ordered.)

 

To find a solution for this I imagine I would need to know exactly what BBO is sending when it sends suit symbols. Anyone know the answer to this problem?

I believe this problem has been reported a number of times. If I remember correctly, Fred implied that the Symbol font is used to display the suit symbols and that the problem occurs if the user does not have the Symbol font installed or it has been corrupted.

 

He suggested reinstalling the Symbol font and seeing if the problem is resolved. I suggest trying this and if it doesn't work, send an e-mail to help@bridgebase.com.

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Thanks for the suggestion: it worked.

 

An examination of my Symbols font showed that a demo program I downloaded had installed its own version and replaced symbol.ttf with a shortcut to its version. Also, the symbol font is not easily available if you lose it: Microsoft doesn't have it on its typography page anymore. Maybe in the new rewrite of the software a good idea would be to include in the package a specialized true type font containing the suit symbols so that we don't need to rely on the Symbol font.

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