In case your system's fonts don't support the snowman.

January 23, 2009 6:15 PM

Decodeunicode.org has a useful and full-featured search for the names and glyphs for those Unicode characters that display as a plain box full of despair. It is presented by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Roll the dice ⚅⚄ and try it out.

I hear if you know the secret hexadecimal number you can find an Obama glyph. Comment with the funniest candidate wins the internet.

posted by TheOnlyCoolTim (25 comments total)

It's no img tag, but these days I'll take what I can get.
posted by lekvar at 6:33 PM on January 23, 2009 [3 favorites]

idiot
posted by pyramid termite at 6:36 PM on January 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

〠 was a proprietary symbol for the Japanese Post -- but they stopped using it in the late 90s so now it's a dead codepoint.

𐄳 is the Aegean digit for 90,000. These people musta worked with some big numbers.

⠠⠊⠠⠋ ⠠⠽⠠⠕⠠⠥ ⠠⠉⠠⠁⠠⠝ ⠠⠗⠠⠑⠠⠁⠠⠙ ⠠⠞⠠⠓⠠⠊⠠⠎ ⠠⠺⠠⠞⠠⠋
posted by troy at 6:50 PM on January 23, 2009

Ok, a lot of these symbols are not working for me.
Instead I get blocks with the unicode numbers in them.

HOW DO I FIX THIS.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 6:52 PM on January 23, 2009

98,884 glyphs and no middle finger. Fuck that bullshit, man!
posted by ryanrs at 7:02 PM on January 23, 2009 [1 favorite]

__|__

(really, it's not that hard to give someone the finger on the net)
posted by pyramid termite at 7:07 PM on January 23, 2009

It's really not that hard. LOUD.
posted by gman at 7:10 PM on January 23, 2009

98,884 glyphs and no middle finger. Fuck that bullshit, man!

Unicode is peaceful. ✌
posted by amuseDetachment at 7:18 PM on January 23, 2009

Gotta be the Yi syllable "mit".
posted by wanderingmind at 7:23 PM on January 23, 2009

✈ ❙ ❙
posted by Hovercraft Eel at 7:28 PM on January 23, 2009 [2 favorites]

> HOW DO I FIX THIS.

Install and use a font that supports more Unicode characters than your current one. There aren't very many (if any) that support all characters.
posted by simoncion at 7:33 PM on January 23, 2009

I've always been partial to the interrobang... ‽ Unusual and now practically useless, much like myself...
posted by StrangeTikiGod at 7:41 PM on January 23, 2009

I need someone to design a Unicode search that works when you know what a glyph looks like but have no idea what on earth it is named. For example, some months ago I was encoding a text that used the ※ character, aka "an X with a dot near each of the vertices". Searching for "X with a dot near each of the vertices" brought little joy. Eventually brute-force scanning of the code charts located Unicode "Reference Mark", U+203B.
posted by Creosote at 7:55 PM on January 23, 2009

Install and use a font that supports more Unicode characters than your current one. There aren't very many (if any) that support all characters.

Suggestions? (What font are you using that displays this stuff?)

Do I have to fiddle with settings and stuff, or just install & use?
posted by Sys Rq at 8:11 PM on January 23, 2009

Did I break the search?
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:24 PM on January 23, 2009

Unicode fonts
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:29 PM on January 23, 2009

I had no idea there were so many Cuneiforms.
posted by delmoi at 8:35 PM on January 23, 2009

Letters are pretty!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:45 PM on January 23, 2009

∧＿∧
(^ヮ^) Let's have vanilla tea and chat!
( つ旦O　∫　∫　∫　∫　∫　∫　∫
と＿)＿)　旦　旦　旦　旦　旦
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:18 PM on January 23, 2009 [2 favorites]

CODE2000 and CODE2001 are my Unicode backstop fonts. Kinda chunky, but nearly complete.

Of course you can also find a glyph for any given code point at unicode.org.
posted by hattifattener at 12:25 AM on January 24, 2009

D'oh! On further link-clicking, what EMRJKC94 said.
posted by hattifattener at 12:26 AM on January 24, 2009

There is also the Unicode Character Search.
posted by zouhair at 10:24 PM on January 24, 2009

You can look up characters easily at FileFormat.info and via Richard Ishida’s Uniview. (Ishida has all sorts of utilities.)

Looking up and entering Unicode characters (beyond what’s visible on your keyboard or what you might know how to type on e.g. a Macintosh) is a cottage industry unto itself.

Jukka Korpela’s book Unicode Explained is very highly recommended (my review). You can take it out to the coffee shop and just sit there and read it it’s that good.
posted by joeclark at 10:41 PM on January 24, 2009

Creosote: I paste those mystery characters into the Unicode Sliderule and select "Unicode character details".
posted by dreamyshade at 11:40 PM on January 24, 2009

Great post!
posted by languagehat at 8:41 AM on January 25, 2009