how to make a "registered" symbol in unicode?

October 30, 2006 7:41 PM

how to make a "registered" (r-in-circle) symbol to go in a text file to appear in Flash

we're trying to make a "registered" symbol appear in flash after being imported as part of a variable from a .txt file. We cant use "& reg;" b/c flash gets screwed up by the "&". The flash is made by a 3rd party and they made a TM symbol by using "%E2%84%A2."

I believe this is UTF-8. we've googled far and wide for an equivalent code for "registered" but nothing we can find works. We keep coming up with "A2CE" or something with only four characters that displays nothing. (we tried %A2%CE and various permutations but no luck)

any help would be greatly appreciated.

posted by drjimmy11 to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Cut and paste this: ®
posted by mosch at 7:46 PM on October 30, 2006

This isn't the exact answer... but you can always do this:(R).
posted by mildred-pitt at 7:48 PM on October 30, 2006

You can escape HTML entities for use in loadVariables statements by URL-encoding them, i.e., express & as %26 . So if your text is %26reg; it should be treated like ® and display properly in a flash text area with HTML enabled. Note I haven't done this sort of thing in a while but I seem to recall it works.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:51 PM on October 30, 2006

Try %C2%AE.
posted by RichardP at 8:21 PM on October 30, 2006

Use the URL code, as George_Spiggot said.

However, don't do it *quite* like he said, and just escape the ampersand. There is a unique URL code for a circle-R. %ae should do it.
posted by kaseijin at 8:57 PM on October 30, 2006

Here's Joel on character encoding, here are assorted encodings for the trademark symbol, and here are assorted encodings for the Registered sign. It looks like the encoding you want is %C2%AE, which is almost but not quite what you've got.

%A2%CE is not a valid UTF-8 encoding, so I'm not surprised it doesn't display anything.
posted by flabdablet at 8:58 PM on October 30, 2006

Off preview: %AE isn't a valid UTF-8 encoding either, but will work in ISO-8859-1. That encoding doesn't allow for TM, though, so if you need both, use UTF-8.

Also, make sure both characters actually exist in whatever font you're trying to render them in.
posted by flabdablet at 9:02 PM on October 30, 2006

If you're in Windows, find the stock program, probably in Accessories, called "Character Map". You can pick a symbol from those shown (of which ® is one, as well as £, §, ©, ¾ and a host of other goodies). You may not have Character Map on your machine, because if I recall, some Windows installations require picking it as an option on customized installs in order for it to even show up (I use it a lot, so I selected mine to be installed).

Not sure if this is what you mean --

Sometimes, there are Alt-# combinations that you can press to get these symbols to appear, and the number used to appear in Character Map at the bottom when the symbol was selected (but my XP Character Map doesn't do that for some reason).

Then again, I'm on a laptop and some of the Alt combinations that I know would work, won't, possibly because I have to hit hold Function+Alt in order to press the numeric keypad numbers (and it requires pressing those keypad numbers, not the numbers along the top of the keyboard).

I can't recall which is which, but Alt-02222 and Alt-0169 do the circle symbols. Incidentally, Alt-0160 makes a space that will show up in HTML as an actual space (instead of the way HTML seems to skip over multiple spaces in a row, it won't skip these).

There seem to be a Unicode area inside Character Map, but it's all grayed out in my copy for some reason with no apparent way to unlock it.
posted by vanoakenfold at 9:15 PM on October 30, 2006

Most of the above aren't appropriate for your problem. This is Flash, which is meant to be playable on machines other than the OP's, so messing about with your character mapping is not a good option, since it'll only fix it for you, not the n number of other people who will see it.

As I said before, stick with uuencoded HTML entities (i.e. %26reg;) it's the browser's (and Flash's) job to map them to the local environment's character set.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:23 AM on October 31, 2006

(I meant URL-encoded, not uuencoded, which is something else.)
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:25 AM on October 31, 2006