Is there a way to programmatically determine if a font file has a specific Unicode Glyph?

Question

I\'m working on a project that generates PDFs that can contain fairly complex math and science formulas. The text is rendered in Times New Roman, which has pretty good Unic

Answer 1

FreeType is a library that can read TrueType font files (among others) and can be used to query the font for a specific glyph. However, FreeType is designed for rendering, so using it might cause you to pull in more code than you need for this solution.

Unfortunately, there's not really a clear solution even within the world of OpenType / TrueType fonts; the character-to-glyph mapping has about a dozen different definitions depending on the type of font and what platform it was originally designed for. You might try to look at the cmap table definition in Microsoft's copy of the OpenType spec, but it's not exactly easy reading.