Netbeans not displaying UTF8 unicode characters (emoticons) correctly

Question

I\'ve been unable to get these characters to display within code (or a plain .txt file) in Netbeans.

✰☆★

Answer 1

To fix this you need to find a font that supports those symbols, and then:

• (Possibly) download and install that font.
• Set that font within NetBeans in two places (Tools -> Options -> Fonts & Colors -> Font for the edit window, and Tools -> Options -> Miscellaneous -> Font for the output window).

I specified the details of doing all that in an answer to this SO post.

One solution is to change the NetBeans font for both the editor and the output window to Segoe UI Symbol. No font download is necessary since it's already available in NetBeans 8.2. Here's the source and output from a test program:

...when I open the same text file using Notepad++ 6.9 (and using "Courier New" font), I can see all of those characters fine! Microsoft Word also displays them correctly.

I don't use NotePad++ or Word, but the following happens in Windows WordPad:

• If I open WordPad the font is shown as Calibri 11.
• When I paste the symbol string from the OP it is shown correctly, but the font is reset to Segoe UI Symbol. Presumably Wordpad is recognizing that Calibri 11 can't handle the pasted text and selects an alternative font that can.
• If I type text on the line above or below the symbol string the font is reset again, to Calibri 11. The same thing happens if I use Courier instead of Calibri.

So WordPad clearly allows the document to use multiple fonts, and that is not supported by the NetBeans editor as far as I know. Are you certain that Word and Notepad++ are truly using Courier New 13 to render the symbols? WordPad definitely is not.

I'd really like to continue to use Courier New 13 in Netbeans, and I want to fix Netbeans so that it correctly displays all of these characters

Since Courier New 13 is a mono-spaced font in NetBeans it's to be expected that it can't handle the variable width symbols in the OP, and in any case it just doesn't support those symbols, which are much younger than the Courier font. I don't think there's anything to "fix" with NetBeans itself.

You can still have have the symbol characters from the OP in program source, but they need to be specified as Unicode strings, and of course you can then continue using Courier New font. See the code in the screen shot above for an example.