Example: [https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/almost-equal-to](https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/almost-equal-to)
Includes Unicode, HTML, CSS, JS, UTF-8/16 bytes, URL encoding, and usage examples.
The same structure is used across thousands of symbols (math, arrows, currency, tech/UI, punctuation).
Built because existing references are fragmented. Feedback welcome.
FileFormat.Info[1] has a page per codepoint. It has been around awhile, so the UI isn't as whizzy, but it has all the data and works w/o JavaScript
UnicodeSearch[2] is an updated search UI that uses JavaScript and the excellent Tabulator grid widget.
There are actually a ton of similar sites with a page-per-codepoint. It is all fun to make one, until the bots come along and hammer every page.
[1] https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2248/index.htm
2. “141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s) want to track you”
3. Exit :-(
I built the site over 20 years ago, and while it was fun to make, I wouldn't have maintained it this long if is was costing me every month.
I've tried to minimize the intrusiveness: I disabled the pop-up and interstitial ads and I don't serve anything different to people with ad-blockers. And I've stuck with Google Adwords, despite requests from all sorts of questionable alternatives.
I'm not sure about the future: bots are causing all sorts of trouble, and the ad revenue is trending down and is now less than break even.
Some symbols leave me with more questions than answers, like “LEFT HALF RUNNING MAN”[1].
I’d like to at least see that it’s a glyph part, that there are two in total, and what does the other half look like; right now the “right half running man” is not listed anywhere on that page, not even in the “related symbols” section.
Off topic, the running man symbol possibly comes from MouseText character set (the one in the Apple IIc[2]). It was one of many character sets included in the legacy computing block[3].
[1]: https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/left-half-running-man
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MouseText
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing
Or better, if 90% of all symbol names are abbreviated, your design simply doesn't work. This is especially apparent in the "arrows" section.
The abbreviations (arrows in particular) made scanning worse than it should be. I’ve pushed a quick update: full names on hover/focus, plus a Compact / Readable toggle for the grid.
Thanks for the nudge.
- The search field is arguably the most important element on the site. It might benefit from a magnifying glass icon and/or some visual distinctions that make it actually look like a text input for searching. It's thick border and shadow make it look like all the other boxes on the page that have thick borders and shadows!
- Speaking of the search field, it would be really nice if it supported fuzzy search. For example, I searched for "greater than" and got no results. I had to search for "greater-than" (with a dash) to find the math symbols (like ≥).
- The small font size of the symbols makes them really hard to see for old people like me who are pretending not to be old.
- Ditch the analytics and cookie consent nonsense. These are anti-developer!
eg ℝ "Double-Struck Capital R" won't show up at all unless I search it as U+211D.
It's cluttered with how to put your HTML character in your HTML, while being supposedly focused for devs...
All that doesn't make sense to me.
- Gratuitous, unnecessary cookies (and accompanying cookie consent dialog)
- cloudflare insights built into the pages
- non-zero counter in ublock origin
That's before we even get to the page source which contains, among other things:
"text\":\"First, ensure you're using a modern browser. If problems persist, try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache. Some older devices may have limited font support.\"}}
I haven't seen this on HN in a while so it is worth reposting:
Developers need to understand context too, not see a static page of "macOS: Use Character Viewer (Control + Command + Space) and search by name, or copy/paste."
The related to symbols make little sense. For example: https://fontgenerator.design/symbol/acute-angle Does not link to all other "angle" pages, but does to Aktieselskab?
Using the `unicode' command from plan9userspace, for example
unicode 2ff0-2fff
Typing in the search field `2fff' finds `no match found'.
The symbols search now supports code-point lookup, so you can search by:
U+2FFF
0x2FFF
plain hex (2fff, 4–6 digits)
This makes it possible to jump straight to a symbol page even when the glyph doesn’t render locally and you only have the code point (like the Emacs/BSD case you described).
One limitation to note: some symbols aren’t covered by common or default system fonts, so they may still appear as tofu boxes depending on the font stack. That’s a font coverage issue rather than Unicode itself.
Appreciate you calling this out — this was exactly the kind of workflow gap I wanted to catch.
The directions for input on on each operating system are all the same, use an app? On Windows there's a key sequence based on the codepoint integer. It should tell you exactly what to type. The Linux one is especially odd "Use the Character Map app or a Compose key sequence, then paste into your app" because if there's a compose key sequence you don't need to paste it.
Please don't display text directly on the grid background image. It makes it impossible to read the text easily. Currently, this is the case when you open the page for a specific symbol in the 'Usage & Context' section.
Fixed.
Oh well! Still good.
When I click the "Click to copy" my UI reflex tells me to look for a "Copied!" or similar acknowledgement. But I don't see one, so there's uncertainty if it was copied safely to my invisible clipboard or not.
Please keep making this, it's good! What inspired you for the design? I like this style, and notice it around, but can't pinpoint.
There is also a "Copied x" toast (is this the correct term? idk) at the bottom of the viewport when you click a character box, maybe it was also added later on.
It's obscured by the "We use optional cookies..." popup.
I found it odd, that tapping on a square “highlights” it, by making it “pop,” but nothing else really happens.
It took me a bit to figure out that I need to actually select the arrow in the upper right corner, to get the page.
Maybe get rid of all the noise and just display the symbols in a nice grid without all the fluff or layers.
searching directly for 𓁤 also doesn't work
pressing "V", which I'd assume meant "expand horizontal button queue into a vertical text list" instead collapses all descriptions and turns "v" into a hamburger button...
Please no: just write the character. <, & and (in quoted attributes) " or ' are the only characters that need to be encoded; a few others have arguable benefit to being encoded (most notably NO-BREAK SPACE), but most Unicode characters should just be put in literally. The days when you couldn’t be confident of the file encoding are past: your HTML is being served as UTF-8 (or in the rare case it isn’t, you should fix that instead of avoiding non-ASCII in the source).
Same deal with CSS (" and \ are the only ones you need to escape) and JavaScript (" or ' or `, as appropriate).
URLs? Occasionally you may encounter a legacy system where you need to percent-encode it yourself (similarly around punycoding internationalised domain names), but you can almost always (and thus, in my opinion, should) just write it and leave anything that wants it to be ASCII to perform the percent-encoding itself.
Excel I can’t comment on, but I presume you can just write "≈" and UNICHAR should almost never be used.
For modern HTML/CSS/JS, you should just write the character and serve UTF-8. The entities / codes are there purely as reference for legacy cases, debugging, or when you only have a code point and no rendered glyph — not as a recommendation for normal authoring.
That is incorrect. As you say, you should just write the character in your HTML and ensure it's served with the correct encoding. If it's just for legacy cases, debugging or such, say so on the site.
I don't need to be told on each one to "Click to Copy".
But nice concept.
No. Please just give me an option to reject all tracking cookies instead of just kicking me in the face with a done deal.
Whoever wrote this 'EU/UK users: this serves as our cookie notice' is ignorant of the actual law. Have a look at:
Interesting I discovered two new-to-me temperature symbols (℃ and ℉), but couldn't find the Alt-0176 ° generic degree sign that shows up on the MS Character Map app. I also found the There Exists symbol ∃ !! I'd been seeking for years; it was so useful since finding out about it in college logic courses... This will be even more useful when the Alt-code fields are all filled in! Thanks!