
Unicode Snowman for You - jamesjyu
http://xn--n3h.net/
======
steveklabnik
<http://railssnowman.info> , for those of you who haven't seen it.

I believe it ended up being a ✓ in the final build, though.

~~~
bradleyland
Looks like it was originally committed as a snowman, changed, then committed
again, then finally removed. Quite the flurry of activity over a tiny
character that sits in the background quietly increasing the consistency of
browser behavior and saving the world from cross-encoded text.

~~~
bodhi
It was quite a good case-study in bike-shedding.

For those new to the term, it's effectively "The intensity of discussion is
inversely proportional to the complexity of the problem".
<http://ftp.sunet.se/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_Law_of_Triviality>

~~~
steveklabnik
I don't know if I'd entirely call it bike-shedding; if they left it as a
snowman, people would start to make comments like "Oh those unprofessional
Rubyists, putting silly snowmans willy-nilly into code!"

Then again, they might not. But a check seems more 'professional.'

~~~
bodhi
I agree with you on the end result, but I remember following the comments and
discussion on GitHub when the changes were being made. It sure seemed like a
big discussion over not much across several commits, and more thank 50
comments on GitHub alone.

~~~
steveklabnik
Yeah, I saw nothing of that, so... you may certainly well be right.

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tdsrtso
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Miscellaneous...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Miscellaneous_symbols_\(Unicode_block\))

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treitnauer
The sad story of the unicode snowman:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035926>

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jtagen
I'm not clear how how the snowman translates to xn--n3h...?

~~~
Sidnicious
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode>

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w1ntermute
Does anyone know how to get the URL to be displayed as <http://☃.net> rather
than <http://xn--n3h.net> in Firefox?

~~~
johnny22
it's displayed like that on purpose, so folks don't fake banking site or other
important domains with unicode characters that are similiar to the standard
latin characters but aren't actually them.

look in about:config for

"network.IDN.whitelist.tld" and put .ws in there

~~~
w1ntermute
Ah didn't think about that. I guess I should leave it as it is after all ;/

But won't this have to be enabled in other countries (like China), where they
actually want to see the Unicode characters? Isn't that going to increase
their risks of being phished?

~~~
thristian
Different top-level domains have different rules about what characters they'll
allow in domain names. If a registrar has policies that prevent homograph
registration, Firefox (and other browser vendors) will add them to the default
whitelist.

If the .cn registrar has a policy that says "only ASCII and CJK characters
will be allowed in domain names", then it's pretty unlikely that a homoglyph
attack will work, and browsers will show the properly-decoded string as the
domain name.

(and sure enough, my copy of Firefox sets "network.IDN.whitelist.cn" to true)

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CWIZO
I only see a black bordered box. I'm on WinXP and latest dev channel chrome.
Am I missing something?

~~~
ugh
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/sonwman.png> (Screenshot for all those who
can’t see it.)

~~~
tomerico
Funny it looks different on my computer:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2601554/snowman.png>

~~~
ugh
Awww, yours looks much nicer. The page doesn’t specify a font so I guess it’s
just using the default font of the browser (or, failing that, any font that
contains the Unicode character; I would be surprised if many do). My default
font is Helvetica Neue.

– edit: I did some digging around. There are a few fonts on my computer which
contain a snowman. My browser uses (for whatever reason) Hiragino which is a
family of Japanese fonts that comes standard with every Mac. Your nice snowman
is the one in Arial Unicode. Here are all the snowmen on my system:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/snowmen.png>

~~~
alanh
I wonder if Hiragino isn’t the choice due in part to the prevalence of emoji
in Japan.

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languagehacker
This claims to be a mirror, but it's sourcing the font file from the original
website. That means if unicodesnowmanforyou.com goes down, so does the mirror.
Not a mirror.

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arohner
So why does Unicode Snowman exist? What language uses it?

~~~
m_myers
It's in the Symbols & Dingbats subrange, along with the comet (☄), the cloud
(☁), the umbrella (☂), the hot springs (♨), all the card suits, all the chess
pieces (both white and black), a few musical notes, and various and sundry
others. Open Character Map in Arial Unicode font and you can see for yourself.

Not all Unicode symbols are meant for languages.

~~~
alanh
I love Unicode (my license plate? 0x2764 ❤) and that these symbols exist, but
get upset that they still don’t see a reason to add a padlock (or two, one
open and one closed) or play/pause/ffwd/rev symbols.

~~~
thecrusher
Unicode 6.0 has: 1F512 and 1F513 closed and open locks. Also 1F511 is a key,
1F510 is a key and lock, and 1F50F is a lock with ink pen(?).

Unicode 6.0 also adds ffwd and rewind symbols but frustratingly leaves out
pause and play. Plenty of triangles for play (which may or may not match the
new additions). But two vertical lines or boxes are going to be very
inconsistent from font to font in looking like a pause symbol.

My biggest peeve? The standard power button symbol on every computer and
almost everything else these days, the IEC 5009 standy icon, also recognized
as the power symbol in IEEE 1621. You can approximate the IEC 5010 on/off
button with some other things, but it won't reliably look the same, and won't
look at all like the IEC 5009 icon.

Pause, play, and power buttons are WAY WAY WAY more useful (i.e. necessary) in
text than a nail polish icon.

~~~
alanh
Thanks for the info, and I cannot agree enough.

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Skroob
Why is it wearing a fez?

~~~
Groxx
Because it _can_.

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vinhboy
<http://www.gооgle.com> <\-- attention to details...

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gcb
<http://☃.net/>

~~~
l0nwlf
One of my friend had a similar domain but he got it refunded because it didn't
worked in all browsers etc and would not in future either according to him
because of ICANN's specs which go against symbols in domain names.

~~~
alanh
> _go against symbols in domain names_

Can you clarify which symbol it was? The only related problem I know is that
homoglyphs in domain names are problematic due to their potential abuse for
phishing. So for example a smallcaps letter O or C that looks like a lowercase
o or c would be problematic.

 _Edit in response:_ The Apple symbol  (U+F8FF) is not cross-platform. It’s
explicitly defined as a code point that a system (OS X in this case) can
define for its own “private use.” Given this, it’s not surprising that it
would go against ICANN policy and cause problems in various browsers.

~~~
l0nwlf
The symbol was  [Edit: Image link <http://i.imgur.com/Pf0Br.png> ]

The domain name was .ws

~~~
jrockway
On my machine, that looks like the Euro symbol.

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brian6
How to monetize this? In general, how to monetize being funny/entertaining (on
the web)?

