Problem in displaying webdings font in JLabel

Question

I want to use webdings font to display any arbitary string in JLabel. But it is only showing sqaures, any ideas whats the problem ?
I had the font installed and i had checked it. Font display is also working nice in other applications like IE etc.
Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Make sure you're using characters that the font can actually display, otherwise you'll just get those squares. Here's an example that works on WinXP SP1 with Sun's JDK 1.4.2_05-b04:
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class Wingdings {
    private static final Font WINGDINGS = new Font("Wingdings", Font.PLAIN, 1);
    private static final Runnable GUI_BUILDER = new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                // scissors
                JLabel label = new JLabel("\u2701\u2702");
                Font labelFont = WINGDINGS.deriveFont(32f);
                label.setFont(labelFont);
                JFrame f = new JFrame();
                f.getContentPane().add(label, BorderLayout.CENTER);
                f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                f.pack();
                f.setVisible(true);
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(GUI_BUILDER);
}