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Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want

Screenshot of shapecatcher.com captured 2026-07-20
Page preview · captured 2026-07-20

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Resurfaced independently across 13 calendar years, with breakout response in 5 of them.

submissions
17
submitters
16
observed span
2011–2025
peak thread · 107 comments
271 pts
latest 20+ return · 2025-01-18
28 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

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Couldn't get it to find the unicode snowman[1]: http://i.imgur.com/gaIY9Gd.png (my drawing skills are awesome, no?) But that aside, this looks like a neat idea. Not something I have any immediate use for myself, but could certainly be useful in some situations. [1] http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm

Hupo·271-point thread·

Similar visual search for LaTeX characters: http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html

Seems to be matching against one particular typeface, and is very sensitive to how similar what you write is to that typeface. The first thing I tried was a lowercase "a," which, in my handwriting, is a one-story "a," and it had no idea what it was. Likewise it guessed poorly at my lowercase "f" because the top of my "f" curves back down, and its doesn't, etc. Seems like it would benefit from a dataset with more variations on…

Similar tool for mathematical symbols: http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html

cedex12·115-point thread·

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
5

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
989

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
319

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission