[HN Gopher] Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every...
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Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol
I'm building a Unicode reference where each symbol has its own dev-
friendly page with all relevant encodings. 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.
Author : yarlinghe
Score : 159 points
Date : 2025-12-25 15:32 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fontgenerator.design)
(TXT) w3m dump (fontgenerator.design)
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Planning to add more symbol-specific notes (confusables, common
| pitfalls, rendering quirks). Curious what details people usually
| look for but can't find.
| __patchbit__ wrote:
| I don't know how to find the ideal font for the missing glyph
| on my environment which is BSD.
|
| Using the `unicode' command from plan9userspace, for example
| unicode 2ff0-2fff
|
| the last three symbols are shown inside emacs as squares with
| the four hex values inside.
|
| Typing in the search field `2fff' finds `no match found'.
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Good catch -- I just pushed an update based on this.
|
| 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.
| longor1996 wrote:
| Maybe you could use unifont glyphs (drawn as SVGs?) as
| fallback?
| layer8 wrote:
| The useful info that doesn't already exist a dozen times on the
| web is the info you can't auto-generate.
| LordGrey wrote:
| I really like this. I appreciate the many "copy" buttons that
| make it easy to grab various font values once I find a character.
| Good job!
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Thanks -- glad the copy buttons are useful. That was exactly
| the goal.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > We use cookies and similar technologies for analytics (Google
| Analytics) and session recording (Microsoft Clarity). Ads may be
| enabled in the future (Google AdSense). By continuing to use this
| site, you acknowledge this notice. You can manage cookies in your
| browser settings. EU/UK users: this serves as our cookie notice.
|
| 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:
|
| https://gdpr.eu/cookies/
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Fair point -- you're right to call this out. I've now removed
| Microsoft Clarity (no session recording/heatmaps), and GA4 is
| opt-in with a real "Reject all" option (default off). This is
| already deployed.
| jdeisenberg wrote:
| I'm looking at the currency block. Each box has a colored "drop
| shadow". I spent a minute or so trying to figure out what the
| significance of the color is. Finally, I noticed that the color
| appears to cycle between cyan, magenta, and yellow. Is this a
| design element only, or do the colors actually have some meaning
| with respect to the symbol?
| spoiler wrote:
| Not the author, but it seems to be only stylistic
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Purely cosmetic. In hindsight, probably unnecessary -- but once
| you add color, it's hard to stop
| troupo wrote:
| I was going to complain about something or other in the
| design but then stopped myself: we don't get enough quirky
| designs as it is.
| victrflow wrote:
| Ohh, this is great! I actually was looking for something like
| this the other day. Thanks for sharing and nice work!
| rswail wrote:
| I'd like the hint to display the hidden parts of each box when
| hovered.
|
| I don't need to be told on each one to "Click to Copy".
|
| But nice concept.
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Good points. The hover hint could definitely do more useful
| work, and the repeated "Click to Copy" is probably
| overexplaining. UI polish still very much in progress
| mda wrote:
| On mobile, the expand icon covers 1/4 of each character so it is
| hard to see what they are
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Yeah, mobile is rougher than desktop right now. Thanks for
| flagging it.
| StrangeSound wrote:
| Opposite problem for me. I'm finding it impossible to expand
| because the button is so small!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Very nice.
|
| 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.
| tantalor wrote:
| The arrow is too small to click on mobile
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is beautiful. Love the design. When I read the title I
| thought it was "one page per Unicode" so I click on the codes and
| hope a page will open with a giant Unicode where I can see about
| it in details.
|
| 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.
| phforms wrote:
| Don't know if it was added after your comment, but there
| actually is one separate page for each character, just click
| the arrow in the top-right corner of each box. For more "giant"
| character previews I can recommend https://decodeunicode.org/en
| (which is more focussed on writing systems though).
|
| 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.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Or maybe I just wasn't looking at the bottom! Thanks
| kmoser wrote:
| > There is also a "Copied x" toast (is this the correct term?
| idk) at the bottom of the viewport
|
| It's obscured by the "We use optional cookies..." popup.
| arendtio wrote:
| Some constructive criticism:
|
| 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.
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Noted.
|
| Fixed.
| WA wrote:
| Nice, but way too many abbreviated descriptions and no way to see
| the full name of a symbol without clicking on it. Needs a tooltip
| / title.
|
| Or better, if 90% of all symbol names are abbreviated, your
| design simply doesn't work. This is especially apparent in the
| "arrows" section.
| yarlinghe wrote:
| You're right.
|
| 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.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _Use an HTML entity, a decimal code, or a hex code._
|
| 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.
| yarlinghe wrote:
| Yep -- fully agree.
|
| 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.
| ghusbands wrote:
| Your site still says "HOW TO ADD ALMOST EQUAL TO IN HTML? Use
| an HTML entity, a decimal code, or a hex code."
|
| 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.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| No disrespect but I would not call this "clean". The design is
| overwhelmingly cluttered and distracting. Especially given that
| each symbol is obscured by a black square with an arrow covering
| it. The symbols are themselves very small.
|
| Maybe get rid of all the noise and just display the symbols in a
| nice grid without all the fluff or layers.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I agree. Unicode references sites are numerous and yet this is
| one of the worst I've used in terms of distracting visual
| noise.
| lejalv wrote:
| It feels really noisy and specifically, not clean for me too,
| so much that it pushes me away. It's interesting and fortunate
| that it works for the author and some (most?) commentators.
| alexpadula wrote:
| Useful!
| wdporter wrote:
| I find this page the cleanest:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters. I can
| usually just do a Ctrl-F and find what I want.
| california-og wrote:
| My go-to site for Unicode symbols is graphemica.com. I like that
| you show very directly the different use cases, but miss
| different encodings and the ability to browse unicode
| sequentially.
| jeffhwang wrote:
| +1 graphemica has the right mix of completeness and simplicity
| for my tastes.
| Fileformat wrote:
| I run a couple similar sites:
|
| 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] https://www.unicodesearch.org/
| darrenf wrote:
| Long time fileformat.info user. here, just wanted to say thanks
| -- always found it incredibly useful for this exact purpose.
| opello wrote:
| Same here, it is a tool that I reach for infrequently but
| when I need it it's always proven invaluable.
| catoc wrote:
| 1. Enthusiastically try fileformat.info
|
| 2. "141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s) want to track you"
|
| 3. Exit :-(
| Fileformat wrote:
| I get where you are coming from, and have put some thought
| into it.
|
| 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.
| catoc wrote:
| I'm glad to hear it's helping you keep the costs down -
| that's positive. It's the type of popup that triggers my
| allergy - which as allergies go is mostly my problem.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Gotta pay homage to the OG: https://raquo.net/rsaquo/
| amelius wrote:
| Could use a list of (free) fonts that support the corresponding
| glyph.
| layer8 wrote:
| Also coverage by system fonts.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| How do I search for egyptian hieroglyphs? searching for
| "egyptian" neither for "hieroglyph" works
|
| searching directly for also doesn't work
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| expanded button go over the side of the screen for me
|
| 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...
| thwarted wrote:
| It's odd that searching for "section" finds U+2E39 (Top Half
| Section Sign) but not U+00A7 (Section Sign).
|
| 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.
| diziet wrote:
| Cool! Ideas: At least do an ensemble approach by queuering llms
| to explain what the symbols "are". It's so auto generated now.
| Link to wikipedia.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximation#Typography
|
| 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?
| toss1 wrote:
| Very cool and helpful - I'll be using this a lot!
|
| Interesting I discovered two new-to-me temperature symbols ( and
| ), but couldn't find the Alt-0176 deg 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!
| merelysounds wrote:
| Feature request: some context, history and/or example of popular
| usage.
|
| 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
| MassPikeMike wrote:
| See also the very comprehensive presentation at
| https://codepoints.net . For example
| https://codepoints.net/U+2248?lang=en
| brisket_bronson wrote:
| Quite useful, but that's far from "clean".
| layer8 wrote:
| The styling/design doesn't work with dark-mode extensions like
| Noir.
| rsync wrote:
| Clean ?
|
| - 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.\"}}
|
| "Clean" web pages don't need hints like this - they work without
| clearing browser cache or worrying about "older devices".
|
| I haven't seen this on HN in a while so it is worth reposting:
|
| https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
| slashdave wrote:
| Huh. Why can't it find "Angstrom" (U+212B)?
| stack_framer wrote:
| It doesn't fit my definition of "clean" at all, but that's a
| subjective word anyway. I do have some feedback (unrelated to
| being clean):
|
| - 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!
| NoSalt wrote:
| I know the colors are a little ... intense, but I love it!
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| Why do I get a spinning "waiting" on every page? That doesn't
| seem "clean" to me... That's supposed to be raw HTML with a
| search.
|
| 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.
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(page generated 2025-12-30 23:01 UTC)