14

There are Unicode characters for

  • flat (U266D) ♭
  • sharp (U266F) ♯
  • natural (U266E) ♮

But I couldn't find characters for double flat and double sharp (at least not in the character map program I'm using).

Are there Unicode characters for double flat1 and double sharp2?

enter image description here

1 Other than just two flat characters together; ♭♭ doesn't look quite the same as the double flat in the image.

2 Ditto for double sharp; a bold "x" just isn't the same.

pr1268
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3 Answers3

16

is U+1D12B

is U+1D12A

[fonts are tiny in here unfortunately]

Tetsujin
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    As usual, the problem with Unicode. Doesn't show on Chrome 59, Windows 10 (not your fault, though :) Probably a link to respective unicode info might help. – Andrew T. Jun 11 '17 at 19:24
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    @AndrewT. Might be a Windows problem. The Unicode characters show on Chrome 59, Ubuntu 16.04. – Sumyrda - remember Monica Jun 11 '17 at 19:33
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    @AndrewT. Might also be that you're missing a font with the proper characters. – Patrice Levesque Jun 11 '17 at 19:53
  • Windows 10's glyph coverage is notorious, btw - MS don't include language packs by default any more, so there's a fair chance they don't in close more esoteric glyphs either. – Tetsujin Jun 11 '17 at 21:34
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    In fact, these comments show exactly why you should not depend on Unicode to transfer information to your recipients. If you want to send oddball chars like these musical notations, either send them via LaTeX with instructions on the libraries required, or send them as embedded images in your file. – Carl Witthoft Jun 12 '17 at 12:04
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    ..or we could all yell at MS &/or Google for not including them :p Though it works on Chrome for Mac, so that would be Microsoft that needs yelling at... – Tetsujin Jun 12 '17 at 12:09
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    @Tetsujin I suspect Microsoft is traditionally reluctant to push full Unicode support because, due to UTF-16 being utterly engrained into all of its APIs and formerly UCS-2 being equivalent to that, many older Windows applications fail to handle stuff correctly that isn't constant-width in UTF-16 (i.e. anything above U+FFFF). – leftaroundabout Jun 12 '17 at 15:21
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    though I barely understand that ;) The reason to support Unicode is because it's capable of working in any environment, if they can be bothered to actually be prepared for it :/ – Tetsujin Jun 12 '17 at 18:49
  • Works just fine with Firefox 58 on Mac. – SilverWolf Jan 31 '18 at 23:35
  • fwiw, the double flat/sharp symbols are also unreadable here on Debian unstable with XFCE and Firefox, so it seems they are still not really widely provided. – underscore_d Sep 29 '18 at 21:20
5

There is a fantastic site which provides all known Unicode chars and their numeric addresses. It's well - organized and can do excellent meta-searches.

It's zahlee.info. For double sharp,

119082 U+1d12a

for double flat,

119083 U+1d12b

That's both decimal and hex.

Carl Witthoft
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1

If you are on a terminal running bash you can do:

Ctrl+Shift+U then 266d + Enter = ♭
Ctrl+Shift+U then 266e + Enter = ♮
Ctrl+Shift+U then 266f + Enter = ♯

Ctrl+Shift+U then 1d12a + Enter =
Ctrl+Shift+U then 1d12b + Enter =

Here is a complete list of unicode musical symbols on Wikipedia or as PDF.

Update:

If you are on a Linux system you also have the possibility to set up a Compose-key, which seems to be possible also on Windows and OSX, but you might need to install separate software. This enables you to insert the Unicode symbols via keystroke, also in your web-browser or document editor. There are several instructions how to set these up out there in the net, but since there are different approaches for all different distributions and desktops I leave it up to you to find the appropriate link.

nath
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  • Does one need to have a bash terminal in order for this to work outside of the terminal (say, in a browser)? I guess what I'm asking is: why the bash distinction? Or are you just saying you can also put these in a terminal? – Richard Jan 18 '18 at 19:33
  • Hey @Richard, once again thanks for the edit :-) that is actually a good question! My answer was rather meant to give an alternative for Linux and OSX users not being forced to search for the sign with a search engine in the net click a link search on the page, copy and paste it to the web browser or any document where it is needed. Instead just using bash. On bash you could also make an alias so you just type sharp for example and get ♯. To assign these signs to Compose-Keys, there is different articles, I think on UnixSE... – nath Jan 18 '18 at 19:43
  • ...this would make them being available in the WebBrowser too. – nath Jan 18 '18 at 19:44
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    I love when music and Linux combine :-) – Richard Jan 18 '18 at 19:45
  • Honestly saying, me too ;-) – nath Jan 18 '18 at 19:45
  • On MacOS, it is possible to switch keyboard layout to Unicode Hex Input, then type the UTF-16 encoded chars. – ReinstateMonica3167040 May 03 '18 at 00:53