Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mindless2112 | Hacker News Reader

For anyone else who just sees a square: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f44d/

Why do I see a square?

It is because of the encoding format on HN? Or because my browser's built in fonts don't have all the Unicodes?

Yes you need a font on your system that has a symbol for that codepoint. I know I had to install 'symbola' font to get `love hotel` to display a few months ago.

Note that Google Chrome on Windows often can't display characters even if you have an appropriate font installed.

It's not a character set issue. It's just that none of your fonts have that glyph.

I'm on Linux, but after installing the symbola font (Arch package: `ttf-symbola`) and restarting firefox, the square turns into the proper thumbs up sign.

If you don't have a package for it in your distro, grab it from the author: http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/

Oddly enough if you copy+paste the square to your URL bar it displays fine.

What do I install on Ubuntu 10.04?

On Ubuntu, try:

   mkdir -p ~/.fonts && wget -O /tmp/symbola.zip 'http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/Symbola708.zip' && unzip -j -d ~/.fonts /tmp/symbola.zip Symbola.ttf

Restart Chrome. It should work on 10.04 or later (and possibly in earlier versions as well).

After installing the symbola font, I still see the square. Chrome on OSX doesn't support emoji. Try viewing it in safari.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/41228/why-do-emoji-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com