More characters

A repository of widgets, toys, characters, and stuff to “write” with.  A lot of it came from mining @Twitt3rArtOTD‘s tweets and RTs.  Also @tw1tt3rart and §⌣⌊⌣§ @MargaRlda §ტ⌋ტ§

☛ ♌ ◕◕!™ ♫ ♥.•*¨*•.♥ ♫ ☼☀☀☼ (◕‿◕)¸ ✔◥◣★◢◤♥ Ⓖ╰╯╰╯Ⓓ─ⓃⒾⒼⒽⓉ─㋛ A∀╯╭╮╰─◯◯◯──◯◯─★*◆▀█▄▐▐▄─█▓▒░█ ███ © <>Եժ╮╭╉╯╰╃╮╱ #toys ⋕widgets #stuff

☛☞ ♩ ♫ ▣┃▣ ☑✓ ✪☉ ⓞ⒪ⓞ◯Oo◦┗━┛┏━┓⨂ ☮ ➔ ∏∐∏∐ ⋘⋙●╱○○○╲● ╞▇╞██╡▇╡

§⌣⌊⌣§ @MargaRlda §ტ⌋ტ§ stuff

∴⊷╮∵⊷╮∴ ╭⊶∴ ㆀ︶︶ㆀ 人人人

൭രల৩७ ↺↻ ∺∺∺∺ ⊶ Hƛфұ

⌣︶⋂⊙❑↗∈Mʀɞ✚↹0☼◘☲➀…!✎♥ ⌢⌒⋃⊡❍↘∌Wʁʚ✖↸Ø☽◙☵❶…¡✐♡

§⌣⌊⌣§ @MargaRlda §ტ⌋ტ§

@Twitt3rArtOTD stuff

⇄⇅⇆⇅

╔═╦═╦══╦╦═╦═╦═╦╗═╔╦══╦╦╗ ①Ⓐ

║║║╬╠╗╔╣║║║║║╬║╚═╣╠╗╔╣║║

╚╩╝╩╩╚╝╚╩═╩╩╩╩╩══╩╝╚╝╚╗║

╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗╔╗ ╚╔╗╝╚╔╗╝╚╔╗╝╚╔╗╝╚╔╗╝╚╔╗╝

◀▉◀▊◀▋◀▌◀▍◀▎◀▏▕▶▎▶▍▶▌▶▋▶▊▶▉▶  ☰

\❋⁄╱ ╲✽/╱ ╲\❃⁄╱ ╲✿/╱ ╲\❁⁄╱ ╲\❀⁄╱ ╲❊/

█☾☽█ ──ⓖ☼☼ⓓ─ⓜⓞⓡⓝⓘⓝⓖ── ①Ⓐ ④Ⓡ ⓪Ⓣ

(⒮⒲ ‿ ‿ ⒯)))(((⒟⒭⒠⒜⒨⒮

ⓟ▬ⓘ▬ⓝ▬ⓖ▬▬ⓙ▬ⓤ▬ⓜ▬ⓟ ▬▬®

3/23/10 – trying to reverse engineer some of these character sets … 🙂 … not really … i started out just trying to spell “you’re welcome” using one of the cool character sets I’ve been seeing people use in tweets on twitter … but i didn’t find the charts of the full alphabets right away so I got sidetracked into enjoying refreshing my memory about U+ and Ox and hexadecimal and Unicode and other character code format things …

so what follows is another one of those largely-unedited fast passes at thinking about something.  another one of those somewhat organized and somewhat well-sequenced pages of gathering and making note of a few related facts and links.  if you like that kind of thing, here we go again.

what i was orginally trying to do was just quickly and easily find the full sets of characters associated with the cool characters people were using in twitterart and other tweets.  For example, when I see this,  ⓟ▬ⓘ▬ⓝ▬ⓖ▬▬ⓙ▬ⓤ▬ⓜ▬ⓟ ▬▬®, I know that the full alphabet of circled letter characters exists someplace.  Somewhere, there exists a simple chart with sequential numeric character codes, for all the letters and probably the numbers of the English (Latin) alphabet enclosed in circles, a place I can copy and paste from to form words in twitter tweets.

And when I see this in a tweet,  ╯╭╮╰ , I know there’s an entire block and chart of characters that are arcs and lines and stuff like that.

And when somebody sends a tweet with this in it,  \❋⁄╱ ╲✽/╱ ╲\❃⁄╱ ╲✿/╱ ╲\❁⁄╱ ╲\❀⁄╱ ╲❊/   , I know there’s a chart of a block of characters that has ornate squiggly and decorative things and another one with lines at various angles.

A tweet with this stuff ║╬╠╗╔╣║║║║║╬║╚═╣╠╗╔╣║║ tells me there’s a character block/chart with double lines that look like pipes in twitter.

All those fun characters are in addition to charts of blocks of characters and character codes for every character in pretty much every — maybe every, I’m not sure — written language used anywhere in the world.  (If not every language, then all the ones you and I have ever heard of and all the ones computer makers support for organizations like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and such.  )

I already knew of one place, the main place, where they all appear because, when my eyes were better, and when I was making a website that did things in 20 world languages, I was hip deep into the source of the standards for all these codes, the Unicode Consortium’s website.

Home page – http://unicode.org/

List of Unicode charts – http://www.unicode.org/charts/

Example chart: Japanese hiragana chart – http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3040.pdf – Japanese uses three characters sets, 50-character or so phonetic hiragana, 50-character or so phonetic katakana, and gazillion character non-phonetic kanji.  all three were derived from the borrowed Chinese writing system.  The kanji essentially are the Chinese characters, but pronounced with the sounds of Japanses.  This chart shows the japanese hiragana characters and the numerical codes, in hexadecimal number format.

(where our everyday decimal format has each numeral being a value from 0-9, hexadecimal has each numeral be one of 16 values 0-9, a-f where a is 10, b is 11, c is 12, d is 13, e is 14, f is 15, all of which makes each hexadecimal number be 0-15.  that’s the essence of it.  if need more to be clear, there are lots of hex tutorials around on the web.  reason for 16, by the way, is it’s two eights.  and eight is a computer “byte”, 8 bits.  for computer engineers working with 1’s and o’s of digital, 8-bit bytes became convenient and then standard, then two bytes become convenient and standard.  although longer computer “words” have become convenient and standard, most computer-related things use a single hexadecimal value to express the content of 16 bits of computer memory.)

Anyway, the only reason I’m looking for another way into the characters and codes is my recollection of looking around for Chinese syllable ideographs and their “radicals” building blocks, and looking for Korean Hangul syllable characters, and thai characters and japanese katakana and hirigana charts and arabic/farsi/pakistani scripts and hindi devanagari script that getting around in those charts isn’t (or, at least at the time, wasn’t) always all that easy.  And once you get there, if i remember correctly, one can’t copy/paste the characters.  I remember searching around in charts to see the graphic of a character, then read and type the unicode into my HTML page or XML data or javascript data element, and then look at the presented page to verify the chinese or arabic or japanese or thai character I was getting was the one I wanted.  Tedious.  Fun, but tedious.  Tedious fun.  Labor of love.

At that time, I began to notice that lots of people were building databases and tools that give various quicker and easier ways to get information about Unicode characters and codes.  As usual, different tools are optimal for different specific tasks, all based on the massive Unicode database.

What i’m looking to stumble into now is a place I can put a character I found in a twitter tweet, find the block of characters it comes from, and easily copy/paste all the other similar and related characters from that block/chart in my tweets.  fun stuff.

So back to current time … the first interesting thing I googleStumbled into was this tool that lets us copy a character from a tweet and get the unicode and utf codes.  Those numbers give entry into code tables.  Paste this string into the input box and you’ll see the character codes come up.  ▬ⓘ▬ⓝ▬ⓖ▬▬ⓙ▬ⓤ▬ⓜ▬ⓟ ▬▬®

– http://www.packetizer.com/labs/cs/characters.html

here’s another character database

– http://www.decodeunicode.org/de/u+24c3/properties

link below has great charts, but most of the displays are little .gif images to avoid display problems.  can’t cut and paste from the charts.  there is one place, when select individual character, in the little search box can copy/paste just that one into a tweet … then go back and forth from the table to the individual letter and back … ok, can do it that way, but it’s a bit of a pain.  would be nice to find a place where blocks of related characters are displayed in charts as *characters* that can be copied/pasted into tweet and not as .gif images.  if not, just have to pick them one at a time.

– http://www.decodeunicode.org/en/enclosed_alphanumerics

ok, the original thought was spell out “you’re welcome” in circled letters.  so let’s do this the hard way and get the letters one at a time …

▬ⓨⓞⓤ’ⓡⓔ▬ⓦⓔⓛⓒⓞⓜⓔ!▬

That didn’t take very long.  Going back and forth from the chart to the individual character didn’t take too long.

other notes:

– one source said twitter uses utf-8

– several sources suggested utf-8 is used by many, maybe most, internet folk due it’s being able to encode all the unicode characters and somehow makes it easy or easier to deal with ascii codes as well