# Is Gramps fully Unicode-compliant? \[Yes\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Help\ **Tags:** localization\ **Created:** [June 19, 2025, 6:03pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855 "2025-06-19T18:03:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pgerlier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/41988e/32.png) [@pgerlier](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/pgerlier)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2025, 6:03pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/1 "2025-06-19T18:03:00Z")
I experimented this afternoon with a new naming scheme for my repos and sources. I wanted to group the items by giving the same prefix to items belonging in the same “category”. I also wanted this prefix to be visually “suggestive” of the the cartegory. Consequently, I started to play with symbol-like glyphs and combining diacritical marks. One of my attempts involved U+2139 INFORMATION SOURCE followed by U+20DD COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE in the hope of getting a circled bold lowercase i (subject to limitation of fonts, of course). This works fine in document processors like LibreOffice Writer, but when pasted into Gramps entry boxes, the two glyphs are not combined but displayed sequentially. This may perhaps be an issue with GTK+ widgets. _Last minute:_ I tried to create a directory with the above name in KDE Dolphin with the same failure (toolkit is Qt there, not GTK+). Is there any way to enter **any** valid Unicode sequence and get it displayed as expected? ---
**Author:** ![DaveSch](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/gramps.discourse.group/davesch/32/40_2.png) [@DaveSch](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/DaveSch)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2025, 7:12pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/2 "2025-06-19T19:12:29Z")
> [@pgerlier](#): > > INFORMATION SOURCE Try… U+1F6C8 🛈 > **[🛈 U+1F6C8 CIRCLED INFORMATION SOURCE - Unicode Explorer](https://unicode-explorer.com/c/1F6C8)** > > 🛈 U+1F6C8 CIRCLED INFORMATION SOURCE, copy and paste, unicode character symbol info, information ---
**Author:** ![pgerlier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/41988e/32.png) [@pgerlier](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/pgerlier)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 8:48am UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/3 "2025-06-20T08:48:34Z")
Thanks Dave, but I didn’t mention one of my constraints: I try not to pick glyphs from the _Supplementary Multilingual Plane_ or higher planes because there are presently few fonts providing these glyphs. In addition, they are frequently considered “emojis” and end up in colour fonts while I’d like “neutral” B/W glyphs. In theory, this can be fixed by suffixing the codepoint with a _Variant Selector_ but they don’t work correctly in document processing applications and I don’t expect them to work in Gramps which has no super-sophisticated Unicode management (it is not necessary for its purpose). And my experiment already shows mismanagement of “simple” combining marks. **EDIT** After a few more experiments, it appears the issue is closely related to the font used by Gramps. Since there is no way to customise this font, I modified the global environment by selecting a different face in the OS configuration. After careful choice (but I am not satisfied by its aesthetics), I get correct expected combining mark behaviour. So, not a bug, but a general issue in font machinery (I am under Fedora 42 with KDE Plasma desktop). I settled down on _Free Sans_ but this is not my favourite. ---
**Author:** ![anon44746896](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e99b99/32.png) [@anon44746896](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/anon44746896)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 8:19am UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/4 "2025-06-21T08:19:00Z")
> [@pgerlier](#): > > Since there is no way to customise this font, Does the changing the Font in the [Theme Preferences addon](https://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Addon:ThemePreferences) help you? ---
**Author:** ![pgerlier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/41988e/32.png) [@pgerlier](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/pgerlier)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 1:56pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/5 "2025-06-21T13:56:39Z")
> [@anon44746896](#): > > Does the changing the Font in the [Theme Preferences addon](https://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Addon:ThemePreferences) help you? I work with as few add-ons as possible. I didn’t install this one. I don’t mind changing the font in session system preferences because I have one account on my machine per activity (in order to protect “outside” data against my own mistakes). So this is not a big bargain to alter the system font on this single session dedicated to Gramps, even if it not not “aesthetic” for my taste. ---
**Author:** ![anon44746896](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e99b99/32.png) [@anon44746896](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/anon44746896)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 10:39pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/6 "2025-06-21T22:39:34Z")
> [@pgerlier](#): > > I didn’t install this one. Even from a temporary test stance? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/free1/uploads/gramps/original/1X/2ac1e712b7adf612e31ca08a55419f4cf37c0158.png) [@system](https://gramps.discourse.group/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2025, 10:40pm UTC](https://gramps.discourse.group/t/is-gramps-fully-unicode-compliant-yes/7855/7 "2025-07-21T22:40:28Z")
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