How to get the Unicode code and symbol name for some characters in a PDF file?

Question

I have a PDF file with some Unicode characters (see picture).

I can copy these characters to clipboard and insert in, for example, MS Word and I see the character as a single square with a question mark in it, probably because the respective font is missing on my system.

What I want is to get the character code in UTF and its name. How can I get them? Here are the characters I am interested in -- maybe one can just recongnize them directly? Anyway, a general solution for PDF and Unicode would be great.

Answer 1

In MS Word, place the cursor right after a character and enter Alt X (i.e., press the X key while having the Alt key pressed down). In any reasonably modern version of Word, this turns the character to its Unicode code number. To get the name, you can then visit http://www.unicode.org or use Character Map program in Windows, for example. Or you could install BabelPad, a great Unicode editor which shows the Unicode number and Unicode name of each character as you move the cursor right before it.

Alternative, for more fun maybe, you can use http://shapecatcher.com/ and draw the character. For simple patterns, it is rather effective. It immediately recognized that your first character is “White square with upper right quadrant” U+25F3, from my rather clumsy drawing.