I am trying to get some of the more abstract math symbols and utilize them in Adobe Fireworks with limited success. I use the character map feature of windows and cut and paste. It does not work for most symbols. Is there another option?
Examples not working for me
∲ ∯ ⊆
This Adobe forum seems to suggest changing your font to Arial Unicode MS:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/661251
For myself, Character Map seems to work reliably, although I am using "FontAwesome", not mathematical symbols.
You can also try directly typing the character code using Alt + [type numerical code of font].
Hope this helps!
Related
I'm making a virtual computer with a custom font and programming environment (Mini Micro), all Unicode based. I have need for a few custom glyphs in my environment. I know about the Private Use Areas, but I'm wondering about the "control" code points at U+0080 through U+009F. I can't find any documentation on what these points are for beyond "control".
Would it be a gross abuse of Unicode to tuck a few of my custom glyphs in there? What would be a proper use of them?
Wikipedia lists their meaning. You get 2 of them for your use, U+0091 and U+0092.
The 0x80 - 0x9F range you referto to is generally called the C1 control characters. Like other control codes, the C1s are for code extension, and by their very nature, some are generally left open for further expansion and thus have only vague standardization.
The original and most comprehensive reference is probably ECMA-48 - up to the Fifth Edition in June 1991. (The link takes you to a free download in PDF format.)
For additional glyphs, C1 codes would not be appropriate. In effect, the whole idea of control codes is that they are the special case of non-graphical codes.
UNICODE has continued to evolve, with an emoji block that has a lot of "characters" you might not expect. Let's try one: 💎 it is officially called the GemStone Emoji. I used this copy/paste website to insert it, you might look to see if something you can use has been standardized in the Emoji code block.
One of the interesting things about the emoji characters is that they are double-wide, even in a fixed-width font.
Microsoft uses them for smart quotes the Euro and a few other symbols in its latin-1 extension cp1252. As this character encoding is frequently reported as latin-1 using these code points for other uses can cause problems, especially as latin-1 is supposed to be code point equivalent to Unicode. This Wikipedia page gives some history and the meanings of these control characters.
I thought Julia supports raw unicode input, such as:
julia> test = "π£¢∞§"
"π£¢∞§"
julia> 😘 = 1 ;
julia> print(😘 )
1
However, it seems julia does not support (Apple logo).
julia> = 123
ERROR: syntax: invalid character ""
julia> test = ""
"\uf8ff"
I wonder what's the underlying reason for that, and whether there is a way I can use character in Julia?
I believe this link more properly explains the case of the unicode character that you see as apple's logo.
The problem is that the unicode value used is one of several that is set aside for private use. That means that each operating system, or application, or implementation is free to use those unicode characters for anything they want. It just so happens that Apple has chosen to use unicode character U+F8FF (decimal value 63743, or on the web as either or ) as the Apple Logo. But some Windows fonts put in a Windows logo. And some other fonts put in a Klingon Mummification glyph. Or elven script. Or anything they want. And if it isn't defined in your local font, you'll just see a square.
My opinion is that Julia simply doesn't use this special value for anything. This also explains why your "π£¢∞§" characters work nicely - they are proper unicode characters, more largely supported by different platforms.
As a side note, i too see a simple square instead of the apple logo on this instance.
Edit
Here is a list of unicode characters supported by Julia.
To expand on Alex's answer...
Apple's logo () isn't an official Unicode symbol. I think there are very few commercial logos and symbols in the main Unicode tables.
However, Unicode provides some 'anything goes' areas (called PUAs - private use areas) that companies and individuals can fill with their own symbols, so that their users can access certain special glyphs. The main PUA is U+E000 to U+F8FF. Depending on which font you're using, you'll find all kinds of stuff assigned to these codes. On a Mac, I can usually get the Apple logo at "\uf8ff", with the right font selected, but not the Ubuntu symbol or the Windows logo, unless I choose another font. (There's also a fallback mechanism, whereby if you request a code point that the current font doesn't have, the OS will find a suitable substitute in another font and use that.)
[
In Julia, you can only use certain Unicode characters for variable names. Julia wouldn't allow anything from the private use area anyway, unless some fonts were distributed to every computer and everyone agreed on who had which Unicode point. (Mathematica makes extensive use of PUA symbols in their notebooks, because they can and do install their own fonts, and can then access various glyphs from the PUA in the notebook with guaranteed results.)
You are allowed to use emoji characters as variable names, so you could try the Emoji apple, rather than the Apple apple:
Following this lead, I tried this in a Github README.md:
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;top: -0.5em;>text in superscript</span>
Does not work, the text appears as normal. Help?
Use the <sup></sup>tag (<sub></sub> is the equivalent for subscripts). See this gist for an example.
You have a few options for this. The answer depends on exactly what you're trying to do, how readable you want the content to be when viewed as Markdown and where your content will be rendered:
HTML Tags
As others have said, <sup> and <sub> tags work well for arbitrary text. Embedding HTML in a Markdown document like this is well supported so this approach should work with most tools that render Markdown.
Personally, I find HTML impairs the readable of Markdown somewhat, when working with it "bare" (eg. in a text editor) but small tags like this aren't too bad.
LaTeX (New!)
As of May 2022, GitHub supports embedding LaTeX expressions in Markdown docs directly. This gives us new way to render arbitrary text as superscript or subscript in GitHub flavoured Markdown, and it works quite well.
LaTeX expressions are delineated by $$ for blocks or $ for inline expressions. In LaTeX you indicate superscript with the ^ and subscript with _. Curly braces ({ and }) can be used to group characters. You also need to escape spaces with a backslash. The GitHub implementation uses MathJax so see their docs for what else is possible.
You can use super or subscript for mathematical expressions that require it, eg:
$$e^{-\frac{t}{RC}}$$
Which renders as..
Or render arbitrary text as super or subscript inline, eg:
And so it was indeed: she was now only $_{ten\ inches\ high}$, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden.
Which renders as..
I've put a few other examples here in a Gist.
Unicode
If the superscript (or subscript) you need is of a mathematical nature, Unicode may well have you covered.
I've compiled a list of all the Unicode super and subscript characters I could identify in this gist. Some of the more common/useful ones are:
⁰ SUPERSCRIPT ZERO (U+2070)
¹ SUPERSCRIPT ONE (U+00B9)
² SUPERSCRIPT TWO (U+00B2)
³ SUPERSCRIPT THREE (U+00B3)
ⁿ SUPERSCRIPT LATIN SMALL LETTER N (U+207F)
People also often reach for <sup> and <sub> tags in an attempt to render specific symbols like these:
™ TRADE MARK SIGN (U+2122)
® REGISTERED SIGN (U+00AE)
℠ SERVICE MARK (U+2120)
Assuming your editor supports Unicode, you can copy and paste the characters above directly into your document or find them in your systems emoji and symbols picker.
On MacOS, simultaneously press the Command ⌘ + Control + Space keys to open the emoji picker. You can browse or search, or click the small icon in the top right to open the more advanced Character Viewer.
On Windows, you can a emoji and symbol picker by pressing ⊞ Windows + ..
Alternatively, if you're putting these characters in an HTML document, you could use the hex values above in an HTML character escape. Eg, ² instead of ². This works with GitHub (and should work anywhere else your Markdown is rendered to HTML) but is less readable when presented as raw text.
Images
If your requirements are especially unusual, you can always just inline an image. The GitHub supported syntax is:
You can use a full path (eg. starting with https:// or http://) but it's often easier to use a relative path, which will load the image from the repo, relative to the Markdown document.
If you happen to know LaTeX (or want to learn it) you could do just about any text manipulation imaginable and render it to an image. Sites like Quicklatex make this quite easy. Of course, if you know your document will be rendered on GitHub, you can use the new (2022) embedded LaTeX syntax discussed earlier)
Comments about previous answers
The universal solution is using the HTML tag <sup>, as suggested in the main answer.
However, the idea behind Markdown is precisely to avoid the use of such tags:
The document should look nice as plain text, not only when rendered.
Another answer proposes using Unicode characters, which makes the document look nice as a plain text document but could reduce compatibility.
Finally, I would like to remember the simplest solution for some documents: the character ^.
Some Markdown implementation (e.g. MacDown in macOS) interprets the caret as an instruction for superscript.
Ex.
Sin^2 + Cos^2 = 1
Clearly, Stack Overflow does not interpret the caret as a superscript instruction. However, the text is comprehensible, and this is what really matters when using Markdown.
If you only need superscript numbers, you can use pure Unicode. It provides all numbers plus several additional characters as superscripts:
x⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁺⁻⁼⁽⁾ⁿⁱ
However, it might be that the chosen font does not support them, so be sure to check the rendered output.
In fact, there are even quite a few superscript letters, however, their intended use might not be for superscript, and font support might be even worse. Use your own judgement.
There are a lot of programmers editors that claim to support unicode / utf-8. I've tried a number of them (UltraEdit, jedit, emedit) but none of them tell you how to actually enter unicode characters into a file. Some of them tell you how to change the default file encoding to utf-8 or how to select a font that has good support for utf-8, but not how to enter utf-8 into a file using their editor.
The Go language (and some others) support utf-8 and I like the idea of using the actual utf-8 symbols for variables instead of variables with names like omega. I haven't found a programmers editor yet that actually allows you to do this, though.
The only editor / word processor that I've found that lets you how to enter unicode is Microsoft Word. Type the unicode and Alt+X and Word converts it. To get the Greek letter omega type "03c9" followed by Alt+X. UltraEdit will let you copy utf-8 from a web page into it, but their docs don't say how to actually enter utf-8 in a file, and their tech. support people don't know either.
This should be simple, but seems to be completely undocumented. Is there some key combination convention the lets you enter unicode into these editors that supposedly support unicode the way that Ctrl-F is widely used for search?
Thanks.
The standard programmer’s editor vim(1) supports limited Unicode input even if your operating system should be too broken to do so (are there any such, still?).
Just enter ^VuXXXX, where XXXX represents exactly four hex digits.
That will allow you to enter the ~6% of Unicode allocated to the Basic Multilingual Plane. The rest are forbidden to you.
This may be fixed in a newer release.
Otherwise, just use your mouse.
A few techniques I use if an editor is lacking:
Use the Windows charmap.exe utility to select characters and paste into a document.
Install an input method editor (IME) to write in a particular language.
Windows ALT keycodes.
Better to set your keyboard to generate Unicode characters across all Windows applications than to rely on a single application's custom input feature IMO.
Use the EnableHexNumpad feature and you can type any character in the Basic Multilingual Plane using Alt+numbad-plus,hexcode. (May not be of much use on a laptop without a numpad though.)
Or if there are particular characters you want to type a lot, find a keyboard layout that allows you to type them directly. For example eurokb might cover it, or you can make your own with MSKLC.
Old question, but you can type a lot of unicode in GNU Emacs or Vim
GNU Emacs: M-x set-input-method RET tex (or C-x RET C-\ tex) will let you type \omega to generate ω
Vim: Vim digraphs can generate unicode; C-k w * in insert mode gives you ω.
deceze hit the nail on the head. (S)he just didn't elaborate. bobince gave a bit more.
And I'm hazarding a guess that you're a developer or tester working on L14N or I18N. I'm also guessing you need to do more than just a few characters here or there, or you'd be satisfied with pasting from another app. So, I'll share some advice. (note: here, "you" refers to the next person to look here. I'm sure the original poster doesn't care anymore by now. :-))
If you're on Windows 10, install an appropriate keyboard driver that lets you input the characters you want into any application. I'm sure Linux has support for the same sort of thing.
E.g. I'm teaching myself Hindi (हिंदी), so I installed Windows' Hindi (Devanangari) support. I typed "Hindi", in Hindi using that support, then I switched back to US English to do the rest of this post. If all you need are accented characters from Western European languages, you can install the INTL English support and type directly in español or français or whatever.
Don't look at entering Unicode characters as entering some sort of special data amidst your English text. It's just someone else's language. Use their keyboard. Type their language.
I'm writing a flashcard app to help my learning. I'm using the Hindi keyboard support to type characters into Word, WordPad, Excel, and the Visual Studio editor. And that Hindi keyboard support works exactly the same way in all of those apps, as I'd expect it to work in just about any text editor that supports Unicode. And as you saw above, it also works in a simple text edit control in Chrome. No copy and paste. No remembering special codes. It's as ubiquitous as ctrl-F.
It looks like the unicode support in programmers editors (except for some Microsoft products) is mostly read-only. They can open a file with unicode and display the characters, but typing unicode into a file is a different story. If you want to enter unicode in a programmers editor you can copy it from somewhere else (a web page or Microsoft Word or Notepad) and paste it into the editor, but the editors make typing unicode difficult or impossible.
UltraEdit tech support referred me to this web page which explains a lot. Unfortunately none of the solutions worked with UltraEdit.
Microsoft Word and Notepad support unicode entry. Type the unicode value followed by Alt+X and it converts the hexadecimal and displays it. You can then copy and paste it into UltraEdit or one of the other programmers editors. As others have mentioned unicode support depends on support within the operating system as well as the editor.
What got me interested in using unicode in source code files is Mark Summerfield's book Programming in Go. He includes an example .go file that uses unicode. It would be great to use unicode Greek characters for variable names instead of variables named "omega" or "theta".
Using unicode in source code is a bad idea, however. Support for unicode in programmers editors is lousy, and developers would have to save or convert their source code files to utf-8 instead of ASCII. Developer's tools are just not ready to write code in unicode no matter how neat the idea sounds.
How do I write unicode, in hexadecimal, to Facebook "What's on your mind" box?
I have tried writing:
\u00B9
"\u00B9"
¹
"¹"
none worked so far
(let me add that I am doing this from a MAC)
thanks
I feel that facebook converts it all to human-readable string. I think that isn't possible
Try Alt+0185 on the keyboard if you are using Windows, it should have the desired output for you.
The examples in the lead are HTML entities. They would need to be ended with a semicolon, but no matter, they do not work in a Facebook comment. The answer supplied was not, the original poster said that he was using a Mac, not Windows, so the ALT- method does not apply. I know that I did once enter Greek characters, as I was talking about stars in constellations with Greek designations like α Vir, but I don't recall how to do that now and the UNICODE universe may have been usurped by Facebook's stupid emoticon universe.
On Mac OS X, if you do not wish to use the Character Viewer, you can set your preferences to allow input of Unicode characters by code like in Windows.
How to use the Character Viewer
Entering Unicode characters by code