Incomplete character set when embedding fonts in Flash MX on MacOS

I’m having problems displaying dynamic text in Flash MX. When I use an embedded (non device) font and publish the movie on a Macintosh, I lose some useful punctuation characters (curly quotes, en-dashes). If I publish the same file on Windows, it works okay. I’m guessing Flash on Macintosh isn’t embedding all the font outlines.

I’ve made a quick test flash source file. It’s a one-frame movie with a dynamic text field (with font embedded) which displays the variable “foo”, there’s a simple frame script:

foo = "this is an en dash: \u2013";
stop();

The \u2013 is a unicode escape for the en-dash character. The en-dash is available in the MacRoman codepage of my OS and is definitely available in the font (Verdana) I’m embedding.

I’ve been Googling to no avail and am now officially stumped. Someone posted a similar problem to the FlashCoders mailing list last October, which I find oddly reassuring.

It’s all massively frustrating because I’m now faced with the prospect of authoring on Windows for the duration of this project unless I can solve what’s going on! So now I’m soliciting for thoughts, advice, sympathy, tips, tricks, workarounds or guidance. Post them in my comments. Cheers!

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