Hi
This is an interesting problem.
I started testing some other rendering APIs like TextOut and ExTextOut. They solved this problem with Wingdings 2, but introduced some new issues using fonts that behave fine with DrawText or DrawTextEx. In addition, TextOut requires kerning handling, which DrawText does automatically.
I've read some information and documentation on the internet, but it seems that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

@fearless: your solution seems to be the most promising, but what puzzles me is that LiaoMi and I have the same font ("Wingdings 2", version 1.55), the same operating system and the same binary file and the result is very different.
I wonder if applications like MS-Word use their own rendering algorithms. I guess so...
Biterider