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A comment on The IPv6 Numeric IP Format Is a Usability Problem. Parent comment

Re:The IPv6 Numeric IP Format Is a Usability Problem by Nadya on Friday February 19, 2016 @07:45PM (#11137971)
>That results in a different usability problem. Installed fonts are very nonstandard.

And some users change their default font and don't even use installed fonts and override preferences because they're in charge of how things display on their computer.

I use Sofia-Pro and this is what I see: http://i.imgur.com/8PoNfdJ.png

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Re:The IPv6 Numeric IP Format Is a Usability Problem by arm on Friday February 19, 2016 @08:42PM (#11138213)
Your browser/OS should be using font substitution¹ though when it encounters a character that the current font doesn’t have a glyph for. Font substitution is pretty much necessary since it’s currently impossible for one font to hold Unicode’s repertoire of 110,000+ characters; even the OpenType format is limited to a maximum of 65,536 glyphs.

Assuming that it is using font substitution (as it should be whether or not you’ve chosen Sofia Pro as your browser’s default sans-serif font… unless you’ve also changed some other settings too), then the reason those characters show up as question marks is because you don’t have any fonts installed containing glyphs for those characters. (I’d recommend Everson Mono² or Symbola³).

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¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_substitution

² — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everson_Mono

³ — https://web.archive.org/web/20150625020428/http://users.teil...

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Re:The IPv6 Numeric IP Format Is a Usability Problem by Nadya on Monday February 22, 2016 @09:44AM (#11151044)
>Assuming that it is using font substitution (as it should be whether or not you’ve chosen Sofia Pro as your browser’s default sans-serif font… unless you’ve also changed some other settings too),

Yes, actually. The only two fonts my browser is permitted to use are Sofia Pro and Meiryo. My point being nothing is wrong with alphanumeric representations of hexadecimal. Short of glyph fonts like Webdings, every font supports alphanumerics - even CJK fonts.

Some users change settings - heavily so. The "safest default" should be the assumption. Changing something that works for most people to work only for "people with a proper supporting font installed" is breaking the web as far as any devs should be concerned.

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