Fancy fonts (Beautiful Dingbats)
Creative
text styling generator
SHOW HN2018
247points
165comments
#126of 2,155 in 2018
Top 6%of 2018 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
12 positive, 29 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 26 critical, out of 70 comments about the project. Thread score -0.20.
Execution: 5 for, 20 againstIdea: 3 for, 4 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fun and clever way to get fancy text anywhere
From 3 comments
Nice! Submission's UI is way slicker, but for more options and a more OG-web feel, this page is my go-to for these:…
RickS on HNThis is awesome! But how does it work? I don't understand how this is possible
iveqy on HN𝖁𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝖎𝖒𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖛𝖊, 𝖇𝖚𝖉𝖉𝖞!
godelmachine on HN
Works well in Firefox address bar and Google search examples
From 1 comment
Interesting, looks like Firefox automatically resolves these to the real letters in the address bar, but leaves them as is for google search. Nice job aggregating these into an…
morpheuskafka on HN
Objections
Breaks screen readers, which read the Unicode glyph names
From 3 comments
>It's less "can they render them" and more "do they maintain their meaning in alternate renderings". I just entered "this is a test" on the site in Safari and enabled VoiceOver.…
cmg on HNThis is (ab)using unicode, for example the F is actually a Mathematical Bold Fraktur Capital F: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D571 This is terrible for screen readers and…
X-Istence on HNI wouldn't be surprised if screen readers understand these symbols. I develop web sites with screen readers in mind, and I would be very surprised if they could handle this sort…
reaperducer on HN
Shows as unreadable boxes on Android and some phones
From 4 comments
Doesn't seem to work on Android devices. All I see is missing unicode characters. Roboto doesn't seem to have have these glyphs. On Mac, most of the glyps in the title seem to be…
asadkn on HNI'm just seeing black boxes with X marks inside. Can't read a thing. This is on chrome on my Moto G4.
jolmg on HNDoesn't work on stock galaxy S7. Just a whole bunch of boxes with crosses through them.
jexah on HNOn my Firefox for Android, this is unreadable. I had to use Firefox on Windows to see what is this all about.
thisisit on HN
Abuses Unicode lookalike characters and breaks search and normalization
From 3 comments
It's not actually a fancy font but different Unicode codepoints. "a" is not "𝖆" as far as Unicode is concerned. The Latin alphabet is mapped into Unicode for different uses. In…
lolc on HNI notice this is already being abused in submissions to HN. Sigh. A user being able to override a site's restrictions on their input seems like a horrendous idea, not to mention…
kup0 on HNIn chromium, the glyph attack defense works by normalizing to a "confusability skeleton" -- the ICU library actually does the normalization. Even within latin-1 this does some…
floil on HN
Breaks accessibility fonts like OpenDyslexia
From 1 comment
Please don't use this. Concrete example: if you use the OpenDyslexia font and have configured your browser to override individual website's fonts, this is what you see:…
erichurkman on HN
Requests
Support diacritics and accented Latin letters
From 2 comments
I tried some diacritics letters and the site didn't handle those. Is it issue of the site? or those special characters don't include various latin based diacritics? German…
adamzochowski on HNWould you mind checking UTF-8 support on the fonts? It seems the fonts don't support it. You can use this as an example: ěščřžýáíasdfghjk
cyrusmg on HN
Add Zalgo text and other generators
From 1 comment
It should definitely include Zalgo Text (or Cthulhu text as I know it): https://www.zalgotextgenerator.com/ I know it from the first reply here, which I would say it's a well…
franciscop on HN
Questions
How does the conversion work
From 2 comments
This is fantastic. How does this work?
bovermyer on HNThis is awesome! But how does it work? I don't understand how this is possible
iveqy on HN
Can screen readers handle these characters
From 2 comments
I wonder actually. Google seems to understand these, you can search with them. I wouldn't be surprised if screen readers understand these symbols. They're originally for…
shadowfaxRodeo on HNI'd kind of expect screen readers to be able to apply Unicode compatibility decomposition http://unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Canon_Compat_Equivalence since there are many…
yorwba on HN
Alternatives named
qaz.wtf text converter
From 2 comments
Nice! Submission's UI is way slicker, but for more options and a more OG-web feel, this page is my go-to for these:…
RickS on HNI've been using http://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi for ages. Little bit more dated interface, but same idea. That utility also does some pseudo-alphabets using characters from other…
sanityvampire on HN
tell.wtf and eeemo.net
From 1 comment
not sure if it's been mentioned already but https://tell.wtf offers a similar service to this along with a rather intelligent unicode pallete and the ability to draw characters…
ozzmotik on HN
Glitchtext iOS app
From 1 comment
Seems like a good place to plug this: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glitchtext/id1412938752?ls=1&mt=8
stestagg on HN
Zalgo text generator
From 1 comment
It should definitely include Zalgo Text (or Cthulhu text as I know it): https://www.zalgotextgenerator.com/ I know it from the first reply here, which I would say it's a well…
franciscop on HN