[HN Gopher] Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want
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       Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want
        
       Author : dwynings
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2021-07-17 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (shapecatcher.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (shapecatcher.com)
        
       | tbabej wrote:
       | This reminds me of the now legendary Detexify tool, which
       | performs handwritten symbol recognition for LaTeX [1].
       | 
       | [1] https://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html
        
         | sidpatil wrote:
         | Shapecatcher's front page mentions Detexify as well.
        
       | randomstring wrote:
       | Of course I had to test this by drawing an Interrobang: !?
       | 
       | It got it right. My first drawing didn't have interrobang at the
       | top of the suggestion list, because I didn't have the top closed.
       | So there is some bias from the font it was trained on.
        
         | tpaschalis wrote:
         | +1. I couldn't get it to understand the partial derivative
         | symbol [?], unless it was drawn in a very specific way.
         | 
         | But really cool idea, name and execution!
        
           | yreg wrote:
           | I just tried to quickly sketch something and got this: hi
        
       | Causality1 wrote:
       | It would be nice if the suggestions included the keyboard
       | shortcut for inserting that character.
        
       | arc-in-space wrote:
       | Yeah, not bad https://i.imgur.com/hAi7ren.png
       | 
       | I'm surprised by all the search failures people reported in past
       | threads, just about everything I tried worked decently well
        
       | samatman wrote:
       | Because I have the emotional constitution of a ten-year-old boy,
       | I immediately tried to draw  in it, and it didn't find it even
       | after I looked it up and tried to reproduce it as exactly as
       | possible.
       | 
       | Very cool idea anyway, and would probably work for less juvenile
       | use cases.
        
       | tasogare wrote:
       | Doesn't work very well if at all. I tried two times a very simple
       | Chinese character (Mu ) and it was never in the result list.
       | Edit: didn't work with a very simple cuneiform character either.
        
         | slmjkdbtl wrote:
         | It doesn't recognize any Chinese character for me, maybe not
         | trained with a font containing those characters?
        
         | mjlee wrote:
         | On the page right now:
         | 
         | > Currently, there are 11817 unicode character glyphs in the
         | database. Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters are currently
         | not supported.
        
           | tinus_hn wrote:
           | It does recognize Hiragana
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Some past threads:
       | 
       |  _Shape Catcher: Find Unicode characters by drawing them_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284750 - May 2017 (28
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Draw a shape to get a matching unicode-symbol_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829191 - June 2016 (3
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8403103 - Oct 2014 (38
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5150107 - Feb 2013 (107
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Shapecatcher - draw the unicode character you want_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3222964 - Nov 2011 (63
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Unicode Character Recognition_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3208967 - Nov 2011 (11
       | comments)
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-17 23:01 UTC)