Character Study
February 28, 2012 1:07 PM   Subscribe

 
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posted by Frank Grimes at 2:03 PM on February 28, 2012


When I need an accented character or a mathematical symbol, instead of figuring out how to use my keyboard to make it, I do a Google search and then cut-and-paste the result that has been delivered to me over hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.

For those of us who grew up without the network, this still seems a little weird.
posted by benito.strauss at 2:11 PM on February 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


On a Mac since pretty much forever, you can do a similar thing using the built in keyboard & character viewer. To enable on OS X, go to System Preferences -> Language & Text -> Input Sources, check the Keyboard & Character Viewer box. It then appears in the menu bar. Very handy
posted by foonly at 2:49 PM on February 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


The nice thing is that it doubles up as a search engine for finding a personal and meaningful Chinese tattoo characters. I mean, this is basically how I chose my awesome "faith, hope and charity" tat.
posted by rh at 2:52 PM on February 28, 2012 [4 favorites]


Looks very handy, thanks for posting
shapecatcher.com is also worth a mention
posted by Lanark at 2:57 PM on February 28, 2012


Cool resource!
Brave kerning.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:18 PM on February 28, 2012


decodeunicode is also a great resource for this sort of thing, once you figure out how to navigate it.
posted by june made him a gemini at 4:36 PM on February 28, 2012


Unicode Dingbats! See the difference between the balloon-spoked asterisk, the four balloon-spoked asterisk, and the heavy four balloon-spoked asterisk! Marvel at the existence of the eight petalled outlined black florette! Thrill at viewing the fabled heavy chevron snowflake!
posted by suckerpunch at 5:01 PM on February 28, 2012


foonly: On a Mac since pretty much forever, you can do a similar thing using the built in keyboard & character viewer.

Windows has something similar to the Mac keyboard & character viewer, but more generic/general: Character Map. Shortcut: Windows Key+R [run] "charmap" (no quotes).
posted by filthy light thief at 5:10 PM on February 28, 2012


Character Map gives you Unicode, but not the HTML entity, correct? I have way more need for HTML entities than I do for Unicode.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 7:04 PM on February 28, 2012


nice resource!
posted by brightandjolly at 6:18 AM on March 18, 2012


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