Have you found the ascii for an Info roundel?
October 1, 2013 2:18 AM   Subscribe

There are ascii roundels for copyright © and registered ®. Try as I might, no ascii roundel can be found for Info, or Information. Please... have you spotted an info ascii roundel? Thank you, says Richard
posted by Schroder to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Whatever you've found isn't ASCII, and there won't be an ASCII value for your info thing.

See here
posted by pompomtom at 2:35 AM on October 1, 2013 [3 favorites]


There's no such thing as an 'ASCII' symbol for information.

There are exactly 128 symbols in ASCII. It's a very limited set. Technically your copyright and registered symbols aren't in this set.

The extended ASCII set, which has an extra 128 symbols and is totally nonstandard in a very large number of locations - such as anyone using most foreign language 'locales' - does have a copyright and a registered symbol. However, the limitation of 256 symbols total means by the fact that we store 8 bits in a byte, there are at most 2^8 symbols that can be in this set. There is no information symbol.

What you're probably looking for is a UNICODE representation of this. Why do you want this symbol, anyway - it might help explain what to do.
posted by Ashlyth at 2:46 AM on October 1, 2013


Best answer: ⓘ is a Unicode character that's officially called "Circled Latin Small Letter I." It's E2 93 98, or U+24D8.

ℹ is "Information Source." Note that it's uncircled. It's E2 84 B9, or U+2139.

How you input these symbols will depend on your computing environment, but you may be able to just cut and paste them from here, in a pinch. If you can see them properly, that is.
posted by mumkin at 2:51 AM on October 1, 2013 [4 favorites]


Maybe you are thinking of Wingdings? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingdings
posted by lungtaworld at 3:12 AM on October 1, 2013


If you want to insert them in a webpage like © you can use the HTML encodings &[dash]9432; for "Circled Latin Small Letter I." It might depend on the browser and used character encoding whether the sign really shows up. Source.

If you need further symbols and we are talking webpage, you might want to check out icon webfonts (how to).

Note: Comments are stripping out the dash-character.
posted by KMB at 3:23 AM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thank you very much mumkin, your keywords took me straight to graphemica.com which reveals ... #9432;

Thank you very much KMB for &[dash]9432;

Resolved.

Thanks mefi.
posted by Schroder at 3:52 AM on October 1, 2013


Nitpick: the HTML encoding is "& #9432;" not "&-9432;".
posted by ook at 6:40 AM on October 1, 2013


Incidentally, the Unicode "Circled Latin Small Letter I" does render here but isn't particularly legible on Windows 7 / Chrome. To the point where I would not guess it's the info symbol. It's just a crummy glyph. (On my Mac, it's fine.) So be wary of just using an unusual Unicode symbol like this without specifying a particular font to display it in, and I would make sure to test cross browsers / operating systems.
posted by smackfu at 6:50 AM on October 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks ook.

Thanks smackfu Noted. Opera, okay, Chrome is 'iffy'

Understood "be wary of just using an unusual Unicode symbol like this"

Am testing various <DOCTYPEs

mumkin's keywords lead to the roundel at http://graphemica.com/ⓘ

Am super glad this enquiry yielded such quick results

best / Richard
posted by Schroder at 12:07 AM on October 2, 2013


« Older Argentina in 2 weeks - where to go and what to do?   |   Why is my MacBook screenlocking on unlocking? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.