Thank you very much.
On JOptionPane it would appear to be the usual sans-serif font they use in
Java. But I thought that was Unicode compliant; whenever I tried anything else in JOptionPane it has come out nicely. I also have no difficulty getting things like ▷ (\u25b7) to show on "bash".
campbell@*****-laptop:~$ ▷
bash: ▷: command not found
campbell@******-laptop:~$
And I could easily copy and paste to OpenOffice; I tried the following fonts: Nimbus Roman no 9, courier 10-pt, Bitstream Vera Sans, Tarablus, and the ▷ appeared clearly.