Rxvt Unicode does not display U+E0B0, even though the font includes it

fontconfigfontsurxvt

Unicode / font configuration headaches. I've installed tmux-powerline and, per the recommendation, patched my Inconsolata font. The goal here is to display cute little wedge-arrow things, like U+E0B0, in the status bar.

For the life of me, I cannot make URxvt display them. Just shows a box.

The patched font is stored in ~/.local/share/fonts. I am positive that my font cache is up to date. fc-cache -fv reports that it successfully caches the folder and fc-list includes a line for Inconsolata for Powerline.

URxvt is using the correct font. URxvt*font: xft:Inconsolata for Powerline is the only URxvt*font setting in my .Xdefaults. I don't see any other settings in the URxvt man page that look relevant, though there's a lot there I don't understand.

The patched font definitely includes glyphs for these codepoints. sfddiff on the original and patched fonts reports that they are included in the patched but are missing from the original.

Per the Arch Wiki, Urxvt ignores any fonts.conf solutions or the like. What else can I check to locate the problem? And what's the best font / unicode tutorial you've found on Google, because I'm totally stuck.

Best Answer

rxvt-unicode doesn't support glyphs in the Unicode Private Use Area unless it's compiled with --enable-unicode3. This is also explained in the docs.