only a few Hex symbols recognized in Mac OSx Pages?

Question

I've read many posts here and other web sites but haven't found a solution. I've enabled hex functionality on my Macbook Pro, (Mohave 10.14.3), and I'm using Pages (7.1). I pull up the character viewer and use the search function for special characters using a five digit sequence, such as U+1d122, and it instantly displays the corresponding special music symbol as listed in the table Unicode Standard 13.0 This also works for a few others, such as U+1d121, another music symbol. But the other values in that range block (1d100-1d1ff), even those within the same column, do not result in the musical symbol appearing. Instead it's just blank, like I've typed in some random characters. The one I wanted was 1d10B, a musical symbol "segno". Is it reasonable for me to expect that if Pages can return the appropriate symbol for some hex-values, that it should do the same for all of them? Any ideas on why this is happening, and how to resolve this? [attempt at humor ---> I want to avoid verbally threatening the computer, but I'm nearing the end of my patience.]

-Mark

Answer 1

Well, you need a font that actually contains all the glyphs. Which most "generic" fonts (for writing text) probably won't.

The term to search for such fonts is SMuFL. This is standard initiated by Steinberg (and now developed by W3C) to bring music notation fonts to the Unicode era.

The open source "Bravura" font is available in OTF format for Mac at: https://github.com/steinbergmedia/bravura/tree/master/redist/otf

Btw. you don't need to enter the Unicode glyph codes into the Character Viewer search bar. The glyph name, e.g. "Segno", will do as well.

There are some more SMuFL fonts contained in the demo version of Steinbergs Dorico music notation software available at: https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/steinberg_trial_versions/dorico.html