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Quite a way to make the point.
Well that definitely takes the 𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕫𝕖 for most noticeable Hacker News submission.

Suggestion (if you are author): There are a lot of chars that look like another char, often used on the web, so i think that there are more advanced versions to be made. I think i read that a lot of thai signs and cyrillic look like latin chars.

Yeah, it's great fun to put a cyrillic "а" into a variable name in code.
or having your variable names in _𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗 which might be more appearent but none the less annoying. That'd make a nice useless language though.

  𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖈 𝖛𝖔𝖎𝖉[] 𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖓(𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌[] 𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖘) {
    𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖘𝖔𝖑𝖊.𝖂𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊𝕷𝖎𝖓𝖊("𝕳𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖔 𝖂𝖊𝖑𝖙");  
  }
  // 𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖓𝖘𝖕𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊 "𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗" 𝕰𝖎𝖓𝖘 𝕻𝖚𝖓𝖐𝖙 𝕹𝖚𝖑𝖑 𝕹𝖚𝖑𝖑
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OMG, yes:

    # 𝕲𝖊𝖒ä𝖘𝖘 𝕽𝖊𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖘𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖚𝖘𝖘 𝖋ü𝖗 𝕬𝖑𝖌𝖔𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖒𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖊 𝕬𝖗𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖙 

    𝖐𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘𝖊 𝕭𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖟𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖎𝖘𝖒𝖚𝖘: 
        𝖉𝖊𝖋 __𝖆𝖓𝖋𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖓__(𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙, 𝖁𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊): 
            𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙.𝖁𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊 = 𝖁𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊

        𝖉𝖊𝖋 __𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖓𝖚𝖗__(𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙): 
            𝖟𝖚𝖗ü𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙.𝖁𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊 

        𝖉𝖊𝖋 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖓(𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙, 𝖁𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊=𝕹𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖙𝖊𝖝𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖟): 
            𝖉𝖗𝖚𝖈𝖐𝖊𝖓("𝕲𝖚𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝕿𝖆𝖌, " + 𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙.𝖁𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊)
            𝖟𝖚𝖗ü𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖇𝖘𝖙

    𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖗 = 𝕭𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖟𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖎𝖘𝖒𝖚𝖘("𝕳𝖆𝖓𝖘-𝕻𝖊𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍" )
    𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖗.𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖓()
I've always found that attempts at germanization of subjects where English is the lingua franca are incredibly amusing. Further germanization of German words, such as the conversion of "Nase" to "𝕲𝖊𝖘𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖙𝖘𝖟𝖎𝖓𝖐𝖊𝖓" also is at least worth a chuckle despite the solemn background that spawned the movement.

  𝕹𝖊𝖚𝖎𝖌𝖐𝖊𝖎𝖙𝖘𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖙 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝖚𝖓𝖐𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖊𝖚𝖗𝖊 | 𝕹𝖊𝖚𝖊𝖘 | 𝕶𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖓 | 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖊 | 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖚𝖓𝖌 | 𝕭𝖊𝖗𝖚𝖋𝖘𝖋𝖎𝖓𝖉𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖘𝖆𝖇𝖙𝖊𝖎𝖑𝖚𝖓𝖌 | 𝕰𝖎𝖓𝖗𝖊𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖊
𝕹𝖊𝖚𝖎𝖌𝖐𝖊𝖎𝖙𝖘𝖇𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖙 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝖚𝖓𝖐𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖊𝖚𝖗𝖊 is seriously epic.
>"Nase" to "𝕲𝖊𝖘𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖙𝖘𝖟𝖎𝖓𝖐𝖊𝖓"

Which is bullshit and just a parody on linguistic purism.

I could write more, but i have to configure the Zuwachssicherung of my Klapprechner over DFÜ.

This is now my favorite code snippet. I didn't have one before. Love "Begrüssungsanzeigebedienmechanismus" and the hopelessly verbose way it was implemented.
I just remembered the snippet forgot "Sehr geehrte Herr oder Frau". Oh no! -1 bureaucracy point.
OH NEIN! MEIN LEBEN! :(
Google translate doesn't seem to do well with those characters ... could someone please help with "𝕭𝖊𝖌𝖗ü𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖟𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖎𝖘𝖒𝖚𝖘".
German for: Spend the best hours of the day on an orange website.
basically showWelcome()
Literally it means: Greeting-Display-Control-Mechanism. In German you can jumble the words together to get a new, more precise German word. The most notorious being this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/100...
I remember my German teacher struggling to get the class to remember Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (admittedly two words). So she taught us Vierwaldstätterseedampfschiffgesellschaftskapitänsmützensternlein instead. After that Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte was easy.
Too bad the source code of that beautiful toy is nowhere to be found - I'd gladly provide a patch that teaches it about the umlauts which it unfortunately left alone in your piece of art you created here <3
It's trivial to dump the tables at least. Just enter all printable ascii characters :). The umlauts would be by first fully decomposing the string down to letters+combining characters, right?

𝕭𝖊𝖌𝖗𝖚̈𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖘𝖆𝖓𝖟𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖒𝖊𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖎𝖘𝖒𝖚𝖘

Right :). Though it's not quite centred for me.

𝕬𝖈𝖍𝖙𝖚𝖓𝖌! 𝕬𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖘 𝕷𝖔𝖔𝖐𝖊𝖓𝖘𝖐𝖊𝖊𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘!

𝔇𝔞𝔰 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔭𝔲𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔢 𝔦𝔰𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔱 𝔣𝔲𝔢𝔯 𝔤𝔢𝔣𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔬𝔨𝔢𝔫 𝔲𝔫𝔡 𝔪𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔯𝔞𝔟𝔟𝔢𝔫. ℑ𝔰𝔱 𝔢𝔞𝔰𝔶 𝔰𝔠𝔥𝔫𝔞𝔭𝔭𝔢𝔫 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔰𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔴𝔢𝔯𝔨, 𝔟𝔩𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔣𝔲𝔰𝔢𝔫 𝔲𝔫𝔡 𝔭𝔬𝔭𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔬𝔯𝔨𝔢𝔫 𝔪𝔦𝔱 𝔰𝔭𝔦𝔱𝔽𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔨𝔢𝔫. ℑ𝔰𝔱 𝔫𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔱 𝔣𝔲𝔢𝔯 𝔤𝔢𝔴𝔢𝔯𝔨𝔢𝔫 𝔟𝔢𝔦 𝔡𝔞𝔰 𝔡𝔲𝔪𝔭𝔨𝔬𝔭𝔣𝔢𝔫. 𝔇𝔞𝔰 𝔯𝔲𝔟𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔢𝔠𝔨𝔢𝔫 𝔰𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔱𝔰𝔢𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔫 𝔨𝔢𝔢𝔭𝔢𝔫 𝔡𝔞𝔰 𝔠𝔬𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔫-𝔭𝔦𝔠𝔨𝔢𝔫𝔢𝔫 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔰 𝔦𝔫 𝔡𝔞𝔰 𝔭𝔬𝔠𝔨𝔢𝔱𝔰 𝔪𝔲𝔰𝔰; 𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔞𝔵𝔢𝔫 𝔲𝔫𝔡 𝔴𝔞𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔡𝔞𝔰 𝔟𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔨𝔢𝔫𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔱𝔢𝔫.

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    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌,.𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖇𝖊𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊,.𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖆𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗{𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖙: ''; 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖞: 𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖈𝖐; 𝖜𝖎𝖉𝖙𝖍:100𝖕𝖝; 𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙: 20𝖕𝖝;}
    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌{𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉: #000; 𝖕𝖆𝖉𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌-𝖙𝖔𝖕: 20𝖕𝖝}
    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖇𝖊𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊{𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉: #𝖋00; }
    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖆𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗{𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉:#𝖋𝖋0}
(https://twitter.com/nickheer/status/535129309531635712)

    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌,.𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖇𝖊𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊,.𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖆𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗{𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖙: ''; 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖞: 𝖇𝖑𝖔𝖈𝖐; 𝖜𝖎𝖉𝖙𝖍:100𝖕𝖝; 𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙: 20𝖕𝖝;}
    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌{𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉: #000; 𝖕𝖆𝖉𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌-𝖙𝖔𝖕: 20𝖕𝖝}
    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖇𝖊𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊{𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉: #𝖋𝖋𝖋; }
    .𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖌:𝖆𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗{𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉:#𝖋00}
wouldn't this be more appropriate?
I am inspired and will immediately switch to Fraktur for all my Fortran and COBOL code!
Oh.

This somehow reminded me of this one, in pseudo-Old Church Slavonic: http://lurkmore.so/images/d/d6/Pravoslavnii_koding.jpg

Sad thing is, Unicode still doesn't seem to properly support titlos and (not so sad, since personally I think Unicode shouldn't really do anything with fonts unless absolutely necessary) has no separate characters for Ustav and Poluustav scripts.

If you happen to use cyrillic in your source code (for comments or even strings) and constantly switch between latin and cyrillic, then this actually happens with а "c" letter, because both latin and cyrillic "c" occupy the same button. And that's not fun, btw.
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Depends on which keyboard layout you use, of course.

Russian is my first language, but English is my primary language, and I never had my chance to practice typing using the standard Russian keyboard layout, so I almost always use the "Phonetic" layout - where the latin c is the cyrillic ц. (Also, w is ш, and who the hell remembers what []\-= map to - always trial and error for me to find южэьъ.)

Well Python 2 "protects" you from silly things like that and throws a syntax error.

  In [4]: class АnotherClass():
     ...:     pass
    File "<ipython-input-4-ad6e67ea5e19>", line 1
      class АnotherClass():
            ^
  SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Russian government officials are obliged to put all their purchases on the online tender platform.

So they are using this trick (but in the opposite direction, latin `a` instead of cyrillic `а`) to avoid undesired competitors from entering those biddings and lowering the purchase prices (and not paying kickbacks, obviously). https://navalny-en.livejournal.com/52565.html

Huh. I'm really surprised there isn't a Russian clone of tender already.
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Cyrillic, sure. But Thai? Their alphabet is credited to one พ่อขุนรามคำแหงมหาราช. I've never thought there was any resemblance between Thai symbols and Latin ones, but... judge for yourself, I guess?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_alphabet

Credited is a strong word. AFAIK linguists agree it was copied largely from Khmer (Cambodian).
Would you really mind if I said that the Greek alphabet was credited to one Κάδμος? We know that's not true, but it doesn't change the legend (and indeed, the legend of Cadmus explicitly states that the Greek alphabet was derived from the Phoenician one...).
Both Thai and Khmer are Indic abugida scripts that derive (just like Burmese, Lao, Sinhalese, Balinese, etc.) from Brahmi. Claiming any of these scripts is one person's work is displaying abject ignorance of one of the most significant families of writing in human history.
In your personal opinion, of course
For others without that specific font or what have you: "Unicode Text Converter"

On my windows box with chrome all i see are empty boxes.

Use IE (wow, don't say that often) it has much better typography support, if you are on a high DPI display, chrome just looks awful.
> if you are on a high DPI display, chrome just looks awful

I'm fairly sure this is no longer the case. Chrome is high-DPI aware on Windows now, and it uses DirectWrite for font rendering, the same as IE. It just can't display these characters for some reason.

I think he does not only mean the font rendering, but the UI itself.

Anyway, DirectWrite was horrible at high DPI, if I remember correctly.

Nope, the UI got an update too. It renders at high-DPI on Windows. Chrome on a high-DPI machine looks exactly the same as on a low-DPI machine, except sharper. It used to be plagued with issues, but I'm fairly sure they're all gone now. DirectWrite isn't perfect. It still has weird hinting and kerning at high-DPI with some fonts, but it's better than GDI.

I find Chrome better than IE, actually. IE ignores my DPI settings and scales pages to 250%, so everything looks too large. Chrome renders correctly at 200%.

That's interesting. These comments make a lot more sense in IE11.

𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒕 𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒓 11

This reminds me of the 1990s. haha

On my Fedora box with Chrome negative circled, squared and negative squared don't show up but everything else does. Firefox and Konqueror are the same so I imagine it is a font issue.
Here too - except in the title (tab) - I can see the text.
Same with Chrome and Opera on Android 5.0
Same here. I wonder why Chrome on Windows doesn't work.

Fortunately I'd seen this story on my Ubuntu box before leaving home, so I wasn't totally out of the loop.

I thought it was emoticons at first. Now I can see the title.

Works fine on chrome for mac, doesn't work on chrome for windows.

What's weird for me is that Chrome 38 on Win 8.1 is showing the title in the tab but is just boxes on the actual page.
Impressive! Hopefully, this won't end with HN sanitizing everything except latin + latin extended from submissions.
Well it does / should make people rethink allowing UTF-8 by default in user-generated content. I wonder if the stuff generated by http://www.eeemo.net/ works here:

Z̡̖̥̙̱͓A̶͚̬̺L̷͖͓Ģ͕O̳̮!̗

Nice utility. What should I tag it with in my bookmarks though?
̶He҉ who Wa̧i̴t̢s ̴Beh͟in͠d̢ T͢h́e W͡all͏.
#فͤ҈ͨͥ҉҉ͦ҈҉ͨ҈ͩ҉ͪ҈ͣͯͫ҉ͥͬͨ҈ͭ҉ͮ҈ͯ҉ͨ҈ͭͭͬ҉ͧͥ҈ͣ҉ͨ҉҉҈ͧͥ҉ͯ҈ͮͥ҉ͭ҈ͤ҈ͦ҈ͥ҉ͧ҈ͩͯ҉ͭ҈ͨ҉ͨͥ҉҉ͣ҉ͣͪ҉ͧ҈ͭ҉ͩ҈ͤ҉ͮ҈ͯͥ҈ͬ҈ͭ҈ͦ҈ͨͣ҉ͥ҈ͯ҉҉ͣͧ҈ͫ҉ͭ҈ͥͯͯ҉ͦ҈ͥ҉ͧ҉҈ͩ҉ͭ҈ͣͨ҉ͣͥ҈ͪ҉ͧ҈ͭᅠ'̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏ ᅠᅠ'̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋̋ กิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้ก็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็ก้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้้ก็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็็กิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิิ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͣͤͥͦͧ ͤͥͦͧͣ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͣͤͥͦͧ ͤͥͦͧͣ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͣͤͥͦͧ ͤͥͦͧͣ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ͧͣͤͥͦ ͥͦͧͣͤ ͦͧͣͤͥ ▲▲▲̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏̏ Works for me.
This comment has a strange behavior in Firefox, which is not surprising but it's probably a bug: When I scrolling to this comment there is no characters outside of the comment box but when i switch back to this page from another tab then the characters are going outside the comment box.
You should try it on mobile. Every browser does something different. Twitter has a /real/ fun time with this stuff, I've been inspired by @glitchr_

https://twitter.com/glitchr_

It works :)

𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒐𝒅𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒓

comes in a fancy bold italic font in my HN list. I love this hack.

Oddly in Firefox the tab name showing the title only gets as far as 𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒐 before giving up with what looks like a box with D835 in it.
Hey! I was just thinking about this site, and visited it for the first time in years, after mentioning the old San Francisco ransom-font in another thread.

By randomly mixing these Unicode letter and letterlike characters, you can simulate a cut-and-paste ransom-note. For example, an acquired company could announce changes to its privacy policy:

  wE ℎåve yøuR ρrIvᴀçy ⅈn a ᴡiNdøwleSs ℞oøm,
  & ℙℓaℕ τø ⅆo µnSρεaKᴀble †hiℕℊs t○ ⅈt
One of my friends, moving to China for a semester to teach, was thinking of using a proper Chinese name to make it easier for students to address him. He had a good idea, even, which he shared on Facebook.

I proposed that we should name him after the lack of unicode support in our browsers, and we ended up calling him "Box Boxbox" for a couple of months.

Just a PSA for discoverability: since the replacement characters use different code points than their more standard equivalents, the default HN search (https://hn.algolia.com) at least doesn't find this submission when searching for "unicode."
Funny how it triggered a bug in Firefox. When the tab is unfocused, its title in the handle is "𝑼𝒏…", but when it gets the focus it becomes "𝑼<D835>…" (in a square box). The next codepoint is U+1D48F whose UTF-16 BE encoding is d8 35 dc 8f.

I'd say that the truncation algorithm operates on bytes and that it can't make sense of d8 35, but I'm not too sure how to fix that since graphemes can have arbitrary length (right?). Do you have to compute the width in advance?

Hm.. i'm on nightly and seems to be unaffected by this problem.
It depends on the size of the tab headers.
I am using FF Dev Edition and see "Unico<D835>..." regardless of focus. Weird.
>I'd say that the truncation algorithm operates on bytes

This seems likely, as another notable weirdness is that even with full width tabs, where there's plenty of space for at least "𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒐𝒅𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒙𝒕..." it still only shows "𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒐...".

I wish this worked on Windows/Chrome, or I knew why it didn't work so I could star the issue on their bug tracker.
How does it work?
Interesting; the title displayed OK minutes ago, on the main page, in Firefox/OSX. But now it's showing as unsupported-glyph boxes inside the page... but still looks OK in the titlebar of the item (comments) page.

Did some automated or administrative process mutate the characters? Or is this just Firefox drifting, in choice of font?

Also, strike-through. Which is the one I find genuinely useful because I like the suggestive way to say s̶o̶m̶e̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ then visibly correcting to something else.

http://adamvarga.com/strike/

People have written ^H and ^W since forever^W^Wfor a very long timg.
Those are lost on many people nowadays. And strike through imho looks better.
Twitch chat will love this.
In Javascript, many unicode characters are allowed [0], so háćḱéŕŃéẃś is a valid variable name [1].

Note: The number of іllэБіъlэVаѓіаъlэИамэѕ [2] used in your production code is inversely proportional to the number of friends you'll make in the maintenance team.

[0] https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-identifiers

[1] https://mothereff.in/js-variables#h%C3%A1%C4%87%E1%B8%B1%C3%...

[2] http://www.panix.com/~eli/unicode/convert.cgi?text=illegible...

I had quite a lot of fun defining 汉字 variable names in C#. Though definitely not something to put into production code of course...
Strangely, for me on Firefox 33.1 on OS X, the title shows up fine on the main page. But when I click through to the comment, I get boxes only, and from then on, the main page also doesn't work anymore until I restart Firefox. I suspect an extension, but I'm not sure.
𝕯𝖔𝖊𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖞𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖜𝖍𝖞 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖊 𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖎𝖘 𝖘𝖔 𝖍𝖎𝖌𝖍?
𝕀'𝕞 𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕥𝕥𝕪 𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕒 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕣𝕖𝕡𝕝𝕚𝕖𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕣𝕖𝕝𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕖 𝕦𝕟𝕚𝕔𝕠𝕕𝕖-𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕖𝕩𝕥𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕓𝕖𝕘𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕠 𝕘𝕖𝕥 𝕠𝕝𝕕 𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕝𝕪 ;)
Hey, we got this toy and we want to play with it.

There's this great quote that anything that was fun when you were five is still fun when you're thirty five, and playing around with funky letters was certainly fun at the age of 5.

Oh I agree entirely - my post was meant for the irony rather than being a 45-year old curmudgeon ;)

(And I had fun too!)

It was a serious question tho..
I only saw boxes in the title with Chrome 38. Tried out IE10 and it works just fine.
Boxes with (Blink) Opera as well. Works in firefox.
I just noticed that in the Chrome tabs it shows the title correctly, i guess its because it just uses Windows unicode support there. But everywhere else its not showing.
Chrome 38 on MacOSX Yosemite. Works just fine both focused and unfocused.
Does anyone know why there are separate Unicode code points for letters in bold, bold italic and Fraktur? Normally this sort of thing should be handled by different fonts / font variants. Is it for compatibility with some legacy encoding?
Great, now we'll have to rely on IDEs with clickable drop-down lists of variables and function names because simple text input just got a lot harder for languages where Unicode is allowed for symbols!

http://play.golang.org/p/2zYfCx_J-O

Presumably, we are now in a situation where it is actually more difficult to learn computer programming if you happen to have had the misfortune to be born into a 'non-western' language and, to some extent, even non-english. That is an absurd situation and means that, as a collective species, we are wasting a huge amount of resources and potential. Definitely something we should look to resolve.

Having a drop-down for variables certainly isn't a solution, granted. Hopefully, there are some more sensible compromises - e.g. being able to specify a locale-dependent subset of unicode in your personal environment, appropriate use of metadata to describe the language of a file, etc.

Auto-complete is already in most decent editors and almost every IDE.
Does not really work for characters like úôä, not sure if there isn't anything similar in those "styles" or it was just ignored.
This surprises me, what exactly is the point of encoding what are essentially different fonts in unicode? Isn't that the job of the presentation layer?

(the Fraktur variant is awesome btw, and is apparently in the valid unicode range for Java...)

The graphical difference has semantic significance in some domains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Alphanumeric_Symbo...
Indeed, this is technically a misuse of Unicode.
It's unclear whether you're talking about the page or the unicode block.

For the page, that's fairly obvious when you look at the pseudoalphabet converters.

If you refer to those characters, no it's not. It's not just a different style for the same character, it has semantic meaning.
I guess that makes sense.

Personally I find it annoying how mathematical notation seems so intractable today. Things that are easily understood in code for me are a mystery in math notation. But I guess there will never be an overhaul with a more intuitive typography...

Keep in mind it is also true the other way around. Something can be mathematically clear to someone and totally a mystery in code form. Each one has his/her strengths and weaknesses.
Probably true, and I guess if you're a mathematician, you quickly get used the symbols. And I'm not arguing against having those symbols in the first place, its just that some of them have an 19th century feel to them, and do not seem intuitive.

The art of typography and signage really only matured in the 20th century, and I'm certain some of the symbols would look very different if they were designed today. Anything that helps with teaching math and making it appear friendlier is a plus, imho.

It's like three-letter names in assembly. It's good when you're doing it, but step away from it for a while and you can't remember what the signs mean anymore.
I'm not sure what symbols are you hinting at. First I thought it was to Fraktur kind of letters, but obviously this shouldn't be the case, as you point "teaching" as a plus of redesigning them, and Fraktur symbols are used "traditionally" in relatively high level algebra (for some reason some symbols are used more in some realms, for me Fraktur started appearing when talking about complex stuff about ideals). Once you get used to them, it's like a second language, and that's it. I remember reading Feynman used his own symbols for sin, cos and other basic functions (turning them to one-stroke symbols) but he had to give up once he had to talk with other people.

Math symbols are more or less a universal language. Once you know how the symbol appeared, or get used to "reading it right" they are totally natural. I don't see ∂ as a "weird d," I read this as "partial." It wasn't natural at first, but I got used to it, just like I got used to English.

For some concepts that can be expressed in both code and math, I prefer the code notation because I can run it, and also make small tweaks and see what happens. For example, I got a better understanding of Löb's theorem [1] by translating the proof into Haskell [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6b's_theorem#Modal_Proof_...

[2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0d/a_proof_of_l%C3%B6bs_theorem_in_...

If it can be coded, I prefer having both, or implementing the code. It helps in understanding the algorithm behind. But maths is much larger than what can be coded, or is useful in code, so the only thing left is playing with toy examples ("coding" when working with really weird stuff.)

I'd love to see more of APL (and a "larger" set of APL functions, actually) in use. The idea of a notation we could run directly is/was awesome.

The book Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics redefines some of the trickier parts of the standard mathematical notation, and does all of the actual computation in Scheme. They extended the standard Scheme interpreter/compiler to support algebraic manipulation of Scheme programs, which lets them do all of the higher-order computations in Scheme as well (things like transforming between coordinate systems, finding the derivative of a function, computing the Lagrange equations from partial derivatives, etc). Usually the proofs/derivations are shown in the modified standard notation, and then the resulting implementation is shown in Scheme.

I haven't finished the book (turns out I know less calculus than I thought), but the result is pretty effective. You're much less likely to get confused about which things are numbers and which are functions, and which of those functions operate on numbers and which ones operate on other functions, once you see the Scheme implementation of something.

In some cases, you might be reading poor-quality mathematical writing.

According to my generalization of some advice from Knuth:[1] in a good math text, definitions of terms are presented as they go along, and they are explicit about what means what. Furthermore, one of the factors that determines the quality of mathematical writing is

- Did you use words, especially for logical connectives, whenever you could have used words (instead of symbols) to express something?

and

> Try to state things twice, in complementary ways, especially when giving a definition. This reinforces the reader’s understanding. [...] All variables must be defined, at least informally, when they are first introduced.

This is repeated:

> Be careful to define symbols before you use them (or at least to define them very near where you use them).

There are some cases where "the general mathematical community is expected to know what you mean," like when publishing papers in some specialized field, but if you're writing a book, these rules hold quite true. Books certainly should explain their notation, especially since the general consensus for certain notations is expected to change over the decades ...

[1] http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematica...

You can copy and paste them, use them in applications that don't support formatting, save them to a text file, etc.
For an enlightening read, buy a copy of the Unicode standard. An amazing book, containing what I think is the single greatest achievement in anthropology. And read about the history and the imperfect process that has produced a system with duplicates, inconsistencies, but a system nonetheless.
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