LastResort font

The LastResort font was created by Apple Inc. It can be downloaded for free from the Unicode.org web site.

If you have it installed, LastResort ensures that any code point in the Unicode range has a representative glyph. Each glyph is different in that the code point’s numeric value is displayed. Apart from this, code points are also classified by script (if known), whether valid or invalid and more.

Font priority

Wherever an existing font already covers a particular code point, LastResort should leave it alone. That code point would be represented using the other font. Only when no other font is available for a code point does LastResort’s glyph get used. Hence the name.

Examples

Here’s a couple of screen prints of an earlier post demonstrating the Base16b Plugin; with and without LastResort installed.

Note the empty boxes, which are how this particular OS (Windows XP Japanese) happens to display code points for which no suitable font is installed.

Asyntactic script

The Asyntactic script, used by Base16b for encoding, is in a code point range little used by other mainstream Unicode scripts. Therefore it is likely that, without LastResort or a similar font installed, Base16b encoded characters would not be represented coherently on the screen.

Encoding functionality

Whether or not a suitable font is installed  should in no way affect the functionality of the Base16b encoding. The font is merely a visual convenience.

If you have any example to the contrary, please let us know.