Question

I show a unicode string from an xml file in a QLabel. I need to show H₂O in a QLabel but with the digit ‘2’ as subscript (Unicode character U+2082). QLabel can take an html string but I can’t put this html into the xml.

It shows correctly in Linux, but in Windows it shows some garbage instead of subscript 2. I tried many different methods (incl. changing font family), but none of them works in Windows. Why?

Answer 1

This is probably a font issue, rather than Python. Not all fonts in Windows have U+2082. You need to pick a proper font that contains this character.

For example “Arial Unicode MS” has this. Consider the example below:

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui

app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
widget = QtGui.QWidget()

unicode_font = QtGui.QLabel(u"Unicode Font: H\u2082O")
unicode_font.setStyleSheet("font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;") 

normal_font = QtGui.QLabel(u"Normal Font: H\u2082O")
normal_font.setStyleSheet("font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;")


layout = QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
layout.addWidget(unicode_font)
layout.addWidget(normal_font)
widget.setLayout(layout)
widget.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())

On Win 7 32-Bit it gives: