How to know which of my fonts do or don't support certain glyphs?

Question

I have a long list of glyphs with various Unicode points across several Unicode blocks that I need to represent in a monospaced form (which mean with a single font). How I can know which glyph the font does not support in that list?

I tried Microsoft Word, Open Office, Notepad++ and some others, but even ᴡindows® Notepad tries to substitute unknown characters from glyphs in other fonts instead of using the replacement character directly. Sometimes it even substitute characters whereas they exist in the font

Opening a font editor and checking Unicode points one by one would definitely takes hours. Below is the text I need to display properly

┌─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┲━━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━┱─────┬─────┬─────┐
│ ɶ   │     │ É   │     │     │     │     │ È   │     │     │ À   │ № № │     ┃         ┃ ┃ Ver ┃     │     │     │
│ 　   │    │     │     │     │    │     │Espac│     │     │     │ № № │     ┃      ‎  ┃ ┃Num ⌓┃ ⁄ ⨸ │ ⋇ ⨉ │ ₋ ₋ │
┢━━━━━┷━┱───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┺━┳━━━━━━━┫ ┡━━━━━╃─────┼─────┼─────┤
┃       ┃ ᴀ   │ ᴢ   │ ᴇ ℯ │ ʀ ℝ │ ᴛ   │ ʏ   │ ᴜ   │ ɪ 🛈 │ ᴏ ℴ │ ᴘ ℘ │     │     ┃Entrée ┃ │ ⁷   │ ⁸   │ ⁹   │     │
┃       ┃    │    │ ℯ ℰ │  ℛ │    │    │    │\t ℐ │ ℴ ℴ │  ℘ │    │     ┃   ⏎   ┃ │ ⁷   │ ⁸   │ ⁹   │     │
┣━━━━━━━┻┱────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┺┓      ┃ ├─────┼─────┼─────┤     │
┃        ┃ ᴁ   │ ꜱ   │ ᴅ   │ ꜰ ℉ │ ɢ   │ ʜ   │ ᴊ   │ ᴋ → │ ʟ ℓ │ ᴍ ℳ │ Ù   │     ┃      ┃ │ ⁴   │ ⁵   │ ⁶   │     │
┃ꜱɢᴀᴘ ⇬  ┃    │    │    │  ℱ │ ℊ ℊ │  ℋ │ \n  │    │ ℓ ℒ │ \r  │     │     ┃      ┃ │ ⁴   │ ⁵   │ ⁶   │ ₊ ₊ │
┣━━━━━━━┳┹────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┬┴────┲┷━━━━━┻━━━━━━┫ ├─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┤
┃       ┃     │ ᴡ   │ ꭥ   │ ᴄ ℃ │ ᴠ   │ ʙ ℬ │ ɴ   │     │     │     │     ┃             ┃ │ ¹   │ ²   │ ³   │     │
┃Shift ⇧┃     │    │    │    │   │  ℬ │    │     │     │     │     ┃Shift ⇧      ┃ │ ¹   │ ²   │ ³   │ Ent │
┣━━━━━━━╋━━━━━┷━┳━━━┷━━━┱─┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴───┲━┷━━━━━╈━━━━━┻━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━┛ ├─────┴─────┼─────┤  ⏎  │
┃       ┃       ┃       ┃                                   ┃       ┃       ┃       ┃     │ ⁰         │     │     │
┃Ctrl   ┃Meta   ┃Alt    ┃                                   ┃AltGr ⇮┃Menu   ┃Ctrl   ┃     │ ⁰         │ ,   │     │
┗━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┹───────────────────────────────────┺━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┛     └───────────┴─────┴─────┘

Answer 1

Today I learnt about a new tool, which "was made just for your question". It was published in 2011 but I am sharing it here, less than one hour after I tested it:

http://blog.tavultesoft.com/2011/07/character-identifier-tool.html

Hope this helps, it is an .exe so will probably need Windows.

Answer 2

I know your problem, because I am working for a minority language.

You could go to myfonts.com and look under "languages" if your language or project is maybe covered. This would be the easy answer, find the right language and the filter will find all fonts which carry your characters.

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If you have special needs, or characters which are not "language related" but rather something "technical", you can go to advanced search and enter your own(!) sample-text (maybe just your tricky characters (but I would enter some letters too, to get a feel for the design of the fonts)) in the sample-text-box top left.

You will see many fonts and can scroll down to find those who can render your characters. You can limit the list, if you know roughly what you need (for example monospace); by using the provided powerful search tools.

If you have your own short-list of fonts (which you own, or whatever) then even better, just search for those, and see what characters come up properly.

I always like using Arial Unicode as a reference, because it has got all the characters we need. So I can check for example that my sample text has been properly copied and pasted.

Once you click on a promissing font, you will see symbols about glyph-coverage as explained in their online help under FAQ and Language Support.

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If you only want to check on the fonts which are already installed on your machine, you can get a free tool here: http://www.screamfactor.de/

It is only in German(?) but should be fairly easy. You can set your own sample text and so can quickly check, which fonts are supporting your tricky characters.

You can also search for "free font managers" if you do not like this one; I believe a font manager is the best solution if you are forced to work with special characters a lot. I found another one, which is also free and does English too: http://us.fontviewer.de/