Can't use certain characters as bullets

Question

I'm using CS3 and am trying to define a new paragraph style for bulleted lists. The bullet I want to use is a character in Arno Pro (specifically a flower). I go to the Bullets and Numbering section of the Paragraph Style Options dialog, set Bullets as the list type, and then under the Bullet Character section I choose Add . . . to select the character. The character shows up fine in the Add Bullets dialog box, but once I add it, it shows up in the Bullet Character window as a simple black bullet, identical to the default one (but without the little red u underneath); it even has the same GID and Unicode number. If I say OK, it also appears in the text as this simple black bullet.
This isn't happening with all characters in the font; letters and punctuation work just fine (if I for some reason wanted to use them as bullets). It's just a certain set of curlicues and leaves and bullets. And I think it's got to be related to the fact that this whole set has the same Unicode number and are all given as having the name BULLET; it seems that the program is only looking at this identical Unicode number and not at those fields that differentiate the characters from each other. And since this simple black bullet also has this Unicode number (2022) the program just assumes I mean that one. But I have no idea what to do about that (or if I'm even correct about this, as I know very little about Unicode and GIDs and who knows what else). Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

It works like this: all characters ('glyphs') in a font have a Glyph ID. That's because the Glyph ID is simply the index number of that glyph in the font file.
But not all characters have a Unicode value -- this is because a font may contain characters for special purposes, such as small capitals or ligatures, or alternative characters (such as for your bullet), or simply because the characters do not exist in Unicode (the Math section in Cambria Math, for example).
InDesign differentiates between 'any character in any font' and 'a certain glyph in a certain font' because the former can only be coded in Unicode, while the latter depends entirely on the font certaine. The little red 'u' you see is actually a good thing here, it means the character is, or should be, available in any other font. When you don't see the red 'u', the character comes from a certain font (and thus can be any glyph).
This is where InDesign gets it wrong.
If you add a glyph to the bullet list from the current default font, InDesign assumes it's a Unicode glyph (you're just selecting any old Bullet character) -- and it "forgets" to check if the character you selected is, in fact, a regular Unicode glyph, or if you selected it from the non-Unicode "any glyph at all" section of the little character map.
Fortunately, you can circumvent this behavior by tricking InDesign. Simply first set another default font than the intended one, then add the bullet/ornament from the other font as needed -- InDesign will then correctly store it as both font + glyph in the Bullet list.