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The variation selector link is dead, but is archived. https://web.archive.org/web/20160417233039/http://babelstone.blogspot.co.uk/2007/06/secret-life-of-variat

• obelos 6y ago
  I've worked with Unicode for years and thought I had a good handle on its mechanics until I discovered this feature of the system last year. I was puzzling out why some symbol code points sometimes render in flat character style and other times as more graphic emoji, even when the same font and same code point is used in each case. Turned out it was a matter of applying VS15 or VS16 as a combining character, and which was the default for a given code point. Incredibly detailed stuff that this archived BabelStone article goes into in much greater depth than the bit I wrote about my exploration: https://khephera.net/posts/a-unicode-woe-solved/ https://khephera.net/posts/a-unicode-woe-solved/