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I have a markdown file that has some of notes related to basic testing with a multimeter. I know I can use the capital Omega symbol (U+03A9) for Ohms but for a lot of the other symbols, I haven't found any good options other than either showing a picture, linking somewhere else, or trying to verbally describe the shape of the symbols.

I was planning to share with a friend that has ZERO electrical background without them needing more than a browser (e.g. probably putting it on github/gitlab/etc and linking them the document). I know I can always just link to another page or resort to pictures but was kind of curious if there's actually a better way of doing this that would allow me to use the symbols in-line during steps of written instructions (e.g. Turn the multimeter to the "XYZ" symbol (which means "ABC"))

With Unicode having all sorts of math symbols and even some things that look a bit like emojis, I was kind of expecting to find at least basic electronics symbols there too. The most important one for me right now is the "Continuity" symbol as it might appear on Fluke and similar multimeters (I know they could probably figure it out from ))))) but I guess I'm just OCD because that doesn't really look the same to me at all). But if I can get them interested, I would probably end up wanting to reference symbols for "Volts AC", "Volts DC", "Diode test", "Capacitance", etc too. So far, all of my searches have been coming up empty. Am I just missing them? Are there some other glyphs I could put together for rough appropriations? Is there some other, better approach for writing these that I'm completely unaware of?

Thanks in advance.

zpangwin
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  • For instance - `Ω` (U+2126, *Ohm Sign*) - `℧` (U+2127, *Inverted Ohm Sign*) - `⎓` (U+2393, *Direct Current Symbol Form Two*) - `⏦` (U+23E6, *Ac Current*) - `㏀` (U+33C0, *Square K Ohm*) - `㏁` (U+33C1, *Square M Ohm*) excerpted from https://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt – JosefZ Nov 25 '22 at 22:12
  • Other symbols: try [*How to create SVG icons for icon fonts*](https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/11/15/weekoficons-prepare-svg-icons-for-icon-fonts) or google for "_create your own icon font_" (without quotation marks)… – JosefZ Nov 25 '22 at 22:40
  • @JosefZ ok, so that's really weird then. Not sure what committee created Unicode or how it is run... but if they implemented a *partial* set of electrical symbols, that seems even stranger to me than if they had simply overlooked them altogether. I'm not forking out money for expensive Adobe products (I'm on Linux and Adobe support is nonexistent there anyway), so if Unicode isn't an option and there's no other easy text-based solutions, I'll probably just use a picture. Thanks for trying tho – zpangwin Nov 25 '22 at 22:47

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Not happy with my own answer, so if you have a better one, please post... but so far, the best I've been able to come up with, without resorting to pictures, is:

Multimeter symbol Unicode Github Markdown syntax Displays as
AC Voltage U+007E
(tilde)		 V<sup>~</sup> V~
DC Voltage U+2393 V<sup>⎓</sup> V⎓
AC/DC Voltage U+2242 V<sup>≂</sup> V≂
AC/DC milliVolts U+2242 mV<sup>≂</sup> mV≂
Ohms U+2126 Ω Ω
Continuity U+0029 ))))) )))))
Diode Test U+2015,
U+2BC8,
U+22A2		 ―⯈⊢ ―⯈⊢
Capacitance U+22A3,
U+276A,
U+2015		 ⊣❪― ⊣❪―
AC Amperage U+007E
(tilde)		 A<sup>~</sup> A~
DC Amperage U+2393 A<sup>⎓/sup> A⎓
AC/DC Amperage U+2242 A<sup>≂</sup> A≂

I suppose you could also just drop the superscripts and use the AC, DC, or AC/DC symbols right next to "V" / "A" as that would slightly improve visibility since the glyphs would be just a little bit larger.

zpangwin
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  • N/A should be U+007E, no? At least that's the character you are using in your table. – Andreas Rejbrand Nov 26 '22 at 00:16
  • Also, U+2126 is OHM SIGN (Ω), but the character you are using on that row is U+03A9: GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA (Ω). – Andreas Rejbrand Nov 26 '22 at 00:20
  • @AndreasRejbrand Was trying to just use a plain ascii tilde character for "AC" stuff and likewise just a bunch of plain right parens for Continuity... that said, I *was* playing with a lot of unicode chars in my text editor so I might have copied one of those by accident – zpangwin Nov 26 '22 at 00:21
  • Yes, and the Unicode code point for the standard ASCII tilde on your keyboard is U+007E! Likewise, the Unicode code point for the standard ASCII ) parenthesis is U+0029. – Andreas Rejbrand Nov 26 '22 at 00:21
  • @AndreasRejbrand ah so your point was more that I could use the underlying Unicode instead of saying NA. Had misunderstood. Should be corrected now. I also retyped the Ohms symbol (using Linux's `Ctrl+Shift+U` then `2126` then space combo for unicode symbols) so hopefully that's fixed now too, although as far as I'm aware Ohms uses the Capital Omega symbol so there shouldn't be much practical difference. – zpangwin Nov 26 '22 at 00:28
  • Indeed it is now! – Andreas Rejbrand Nov 26 '22 at 00:28
  • U+00B5 MICRO SIGN `µ` might be useful. – Mark Tolonen Nov 26 '22 at 00:34
  • @MarkTolonen True. I don't own any multimeters that use it but I know some have microFarads. Mostly, I have seen that abbreviated as "MFD" but I know some capacitors write it as "µF" or even just "uf" so definitely some multimeters could too. – zpangwin Nov 26 '22 at 00:38
  • Aslo U+0303 COMBINING TILDE, e.g. `Ṽ` and `Ã` – Mark Tolonen Nov 26 '22 at 00:39