I’ve been writing a Python macro for FreeCAD as a learning exercise on both subjects. I thought it would be nice to display the Circled Information Source unicode character as a tooltip icon in a GUI form. It looks like this: 🛈 (if your current viewing font supports it).

After attempting this for a couple of hours, I wanted to stop learning Python and head back to Java…

Here are the things to look out for when using Python 2.7:

• As per PEP 263 a Python source file needs to start with:

  # coding: UTF-8
  

  Note: This isn’t required in Python 3 as UTF-8 is the default encoding as per PEP 3120.

• UTF-8 string literals need to be prefixed with a u as follows:

  u"My UTF-8 string 🛈"
  

• Make sure to use a unicode character which has a code point less than the sys.maxunicode for your build of Python! This one was a real doozie to uncover. Here are some other devs dealing with the same issue

  Note: Again things change in Python 3.3 as per PEP 393.

  Within the FreeCAD 18.0 Python terminal:

  Python 2.7.15 (default, Aug 22 2018, 16:41:11) 
  [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.42.1)] on darwin
  Type 'help', 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information.
  >>> App.setActiveDocument("Unnamed")
  >>> App.ActiveDocument=App.getDocument("Unnamed")
  >>> Gui.ActiveDocument=Gui.getDocument("Unnamed")
  >>> import sys
  >>> print sys.maxunicode
  65535
  >>> 
  

  Of course 🛈 has a decimal value of 128712 which is TOO BIG! So I’ve settled on using the Information Source character ℹ which has a decimal value of 8505.