Originally, his PHP script is the tool that I used for grabbing the unicode characters – it was a lifesaver! But I needed my tool to evolve and so I rewrote that functionality in one line of ActionScript.

var unicodeHexID:String = new String(_input.charCodeAt(i).toString(16).toUpperCase());

This will only give you the character code, so you have to add to the string as necessary:

while(unicodeHexID.length<4) unicodeHexID=”0″+unicodeHexID;
while(unicodeHexID.length<3) unicodeHexID=”00″+unicodeHexID;
unicodeHexID = “U+” + unicodeHexID;

The first line will add a zero (0) to the string if the unicode hex ID’s length is only 3 characters. The second line will add two zeros (00) if the ID’s length is only 2 characters. Flex SDK won’t understand a unicode ID that is only 2 or 3 spots long. And on top of that, the last and final line adds a “U+” to the front of the string. This is also necessary for the Flex SDK to understand that the item in the array is indeed a unicode hex ID. Yay.

Keep in mind that this is rather sloppy and, well, there are probably more elegant ways to do it. This is just a developer’s tool to embed fonts. “The cobbler’s kids have no shoes…”, etc.

Happy Coding!
jevin kones

However, ultimately, it’s limited compared to Zinc. There are just many more things you can’t do with AIR.

There’s also screenweaver and SWFStudio that are viable comparisons to Zinc

Thanks,