Display placeholder for missing glyphs

[timothyqiu]

Describe the project you are working on: the Godot editor

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project:

Godot silently "eats" the character if it can't be provided by the font chain. It's hard to tell if it's a editor/game programming bug or it's just because the font does not have the glyph.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation:

Use a placeholder glyph to provide a visual representation of the missing glyph, like the .notdef glyph in dynamic fonts.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudocode, mockups, and/or diagrams:

For dynamic fonts, use the .notdef glyph when the glyph is missing in the current font, and there are no fallback fonts available.

Bitmap fonts can also be modified to provide a similar "undefined" glyph. For example, automatically generate a checked rectangle box bitmap.

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?:

No.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?:

It seems impossible to load the .notdef glyph through GDScript.

[bruvzg]

At least for the editor, I would prefer something more informative, like character codes.

[Calinou]

This was implemented in godotengine/godot#41100, closing.

Since this relies on the new, backwards-incompatible TextServer, this feature can't be backported as-is to the 3.x branch.