Original Article Date: Oct 30, 2003

This one pager will explain how and why your degree symbol might be missing in some fonts. With special thanks to Bentley's Venkat Kalyan for his assistance!
2004-03-09 Added a graphic of Windows Character Map.

This past week I was dealing with a font issue that I found rather interesting and thought it would make a nice addition to AskInga. Before getting started, I'd like to give special thanks to Bentley's Venkat Kalyan for his help and setting me straight.

Here's the scoop:

When using a True Type Font (TTF) in MicroStation and you place the degree symbol ( ° ), MicroStation will use ASCII code #0176 which is the standard code for all Unicode based fonts. This can easily be seen by using your Windows Character Map which is located via Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map in Windows XP-Pro. Just ensure that you are viewing the correct font and look around until you see the degree symbol. If you poke on it, it will show a larger graphic of the symbol and the keystroke value will be displayed on the lower right corner of the dialog.

You can also confirm this in MicroStation by setting the text editer to WYSIWYG and noting the keystroke value of the degree symbol as shown below. In fact, you can browse through many TT fonts and you'll notice that in each case code #0176 is the degree symbol.

If you've created or obtained a home-made font the degree symbol may not be at position #0176. In fact, MicroStation has no way of knowing where the degree symbol is stored in any user-defined font, and in situations such as this you may end up with the following:

To overcome this you'll first have to determine what the code is for the degree symbol. There are a couple of ways to do this: You can set the text editor to WYSIWYG, or use the FontEdit MDL application. Which ever you choose, make a note of the ASCII code.

Then go to WorkSpace > Preferences > Text > Degree Display Char and set it to the value you determined above.

This setting simply tells MicroStation which ASCII code to use for the degree symbol in user defined fonts.

The correction to the display of your text will take effect once you've updated the view.

AskInga Article #164