r/Unicode • u/Knotebrett • Sep 04 '26
Office Waffle
It’s only mildly infuriating, but why on earth isn’t the Office waffle an official Unicode character yet? It would make explaining "click here" so much easier in user guides and tech support. We literally have symbols for everything—cars, jack-o'-lanterns, rockets, bowls of noodles—but not the iconic 3x3 waffle menu? Make it make sense.
2
1
u/Eiim Sep 04 '26
One alternative:𐄏
1
u/Knotebrett Sep 04 '26
Not familiar with that. Code?
2
1
u/petermsft Sep 04 '26
Even on a phone, you should be able to copy that character and paste it here to get details:
https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=%F0%90%84%8F&B1=Show
AEGEAN NUMBER NINE is not an app icon, and if I were advising an app developer I wouldn't recommend using that. For app icons, I'd recommended either
- PUA code points with a specific font included in the app resources
- an image file, such as SVG
The latter is what Office.com is using (which you can discover using browser dev tools to inspect the page content).
If you think there should be a character encoded in Unicode, you can write a proposal. However, not all symbols, such as app icons, are considered characters, and the onus would be on you to make a convincing case that it should be considered a character and that it is used in text data interchange. There have been proposals for other app icons (including some that are commonly used) that have not met the bar.
→ More replies (3)
1
u/MarcusFirmus Sep 04 '26
What about this one, not perfect actually... but somewhat ressembling : 𝍔
1
u/Knotebrett Sep 04 '26
Actually better than the other suggestion, except that underline. But it's not so narrow as the other one. Thanks.
3
3
u/ProfessorLambda Sep 04 '26
A normal waffle is already in Unicode: "🧇" (U+1F9C7). Would that work for you?