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Comment by gwervc | Hacker News Reader

The circled digits as code points are very nice to have precisely because they are available in applications that don't support them otherwise... which is actually most of the software I can think of (Notepad, Apple Notes, chat applications, most websites, etc).

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My point was that, had they not been legacy characters (or had RT compatibility been disregarded) Unicode could still have supported them as composed characters. Though I personally still feel they are a kind of ligature or graphic, but luckily for everyone else I’m not the dictator of the world :-).

We should be careful: someone on HN could write a proposal that they should be considered pre composed forms that should also have an un-composed sequence… so there could in future be not just 1 in a circle but 1 ZWJ circle, circle ZWJ 1 all considered the same…I can imagine some HN readers being pranksters like that.

Can you write them with iOS keyboard? Or when you say Apple Notes and chat apps you just mean from desktop?

Edit ①: seems the answer is not with the default iOS keyboard, but possible to paste it and perhaps possible with a third party keyboard that I'm not keen on trying (unless I hear of a keyboard that's both genuinely useful / better than default, and that doesn't send keystrokes to the developer - though I can't remember if the latter is even a risk on iOS, better go search about that next..)

You can copy/paste them from a character board, a dedicated website, or even the wiki.

Speaking of third party keyboards, I’m still upset about what happened to Nintype[0]. I’ve never ever been able to type faster on mobile than with it’s intuitive hybrid input style of sliding and tapping, paired with AI that was actually good. It used to be quite performant, fully customizable, and it worked beautifully as a replacement for default on jailbroken iOS.

Today, it’s buggy $5 abandonware that only makes me sad when I am reminded of it.

EDIT: Here[1] is a blog post that claims it's still the best keyboard in 2023. I actually might give it another shot... Not holding my breath though.

*EDIT: Looks like another dedicated fan has actually taken it upon themself to revive the project, under the new name Keyboard71[2].

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nintype/id796959534

[1] https://maxleiter.com/blog/nintype

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/keyboard71/

I wonder why they haven't open sourced their fork, over than vague worry it might get DMCA'd

Nintype was absolutely incredible. I still open it every now and then after an iOS update in the vain hope some system change made it less buggy.

I’m really considering repurchasing (I definitely owned it previously, no idea what happened), can you describe specifically what the main bugs are for you? I’d be happy if I could use it solely for occasionally writing long notes, not as a replacement for all text inputs.

Really not looking to burn another $5, I’d greatly appreciate any thoughts/concerns at all.

I just want to say thank you for introducing me to Keyboard 71. I've never heard of Nintype, but this thing is incredible!

You can type ① with the UniChar keyboard app on iOS. It at least claims it doesn’t transmit information. As it’s only useful for special characters I don’t worry because I can’t use it for normal typing anyway.

https://unichar.app

No third party keyboard transmits information without you permitting it.

The default iOS Japanese keyboard allows easily entering circled numerals and many other “exotic” characters.

Yeah many "exotic" characters were introduced to Unicode from Japanese legacy computers 〠〄

If you use iOS Japanese romanji keyboard, typing "maruichi" will give you all the options.

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