About Package
Package is the Unicode character 📦 at codepoint U+1F4E6 in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP).
Reference
A postal object doing software work. U+1F4E6 sits in Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, dates from Unicode 6.0, has general category So and carries Emoji_Presentation. It is one of 371 characters with variation sequences defined, so U+FE0E after it formally requests a text presentation and U+FE0F the emoji one. Its chart entry carries a single cross-reference, to the wrapped present. Unicode's test data files it with the mail objects — thirteen fully qualified entries covering the envelopes, the mailboxes, the trays and the postbox — and CLDR's keywords are box, communication, delivery, package, parcel and shipping. Nothing in either file mentions software.
Typical uses
- Shipping and delivery, which is what all six keywords describe
- Software releases and dependencies, a reading neither file records
- Anything boxed, where the picture is doing plain literal work
At a glance
- U+1F4E6, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs; Unicode 6.0; general category So
- Emoji version E0.6; Emoji_Presentation, so no U+FE0F is needed
- A variation-sequence base: U+FE0E requests a text form, U+FE0F the emoji one
- Cross-referenced in the chart to the wrapped present, and to nothing else
- No HTML named entity. Write 📦 or 📦
Historical Notes
Origins
How a cardboard box became the mark of a published software artefact is a story about developer convention. What can be checked here is that the standard's own files have not noticed.
Unicode
Added in Unicode 6.0, published in 2010, as emoji version E0.6, in the mail run of its block alongside the trays and the mailboxes. Only 371 of the standard's characters are variation-sequence bases; the headphone is another of them.
A meaning that exists everywhere except in the data
CLDR's keyword lists are revised regularly and are the standard's closest thing to a record of usage — this is the file that carries win on the crown and whatever on the nail polish. For this character it carries six keywords and all six are postal. Meanwhile the character's everyday use by people is in software documentation rather than in post. That gap is not an error in the file; keyword lists serve people searching an emoji keyboard, and a developer writing a changelog is not searching for a box. But it is a good reminder that the annotation data is a map of one kind of use and not of all of them.
Developer Notes
| Unicode Codepoint | |
| Decimal | |
| UTF-8 (hex) | |
| UTF-16 (hex) | |
| HEX Entity | |
| HTML Entity | |
| CSS (\xxxx) | |
| JavaScript | |
| Python |
How to Use Package
To use the Package symbol (📦) in HTML, insert the
entity 📦 directly into your markup. The decimal entity 📦 works in any HTML-serialised document.
In CSS pseudo-elements use content: '\1F4E6';.
In JavaScript and TypeScript the escape '\u{1F4E6}' evaluates to 📦. In Python source, write '\U0001F4E6'.
The character encodes to F0 9F 93 A6 as UTF-8 bytes and D83D DCE6 as UTF-16 code units. Its decimal codepoint is 128230.
This is a fully-qualified emoji and should render with colour on iOS, Android, Windows and macOS. Appearance may vary between platforms, but the underlying codepoint is identical everywhere.
Things to know
- U+FE0F after it is redundant; the character already defaults to emoji presentation. U+FE0E asks for a text form most fonts do not have.
- Adding either selector makes the sequence two codepoints, which changes string lengths and naive truncation.
- Outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, so a surrogate pair D83D DCE6 in UTF-16 and a naive character count of two before any selector.
- Not Emoji_Modifier_Base.
- East Asian Width Wide; line break class ID.
- No named HTML entity. Write 📦 or 📦.
In the Wild
Where a person types this character rather than a file defining it, the subject is software. A build tool's readme lists the character followed by the words Optimized Build. A commit-convention project writes that its list is available as a package, then the character, as the last thing in the sentence. A large list of programming resources uses it as a section heading before the words Everything in one place.
Against that, an encyclopaedia article on parcels contains none of it. Three uses, none of them postal, in a character whose six keywords are all postal.
Pages change; this is what those showed on the day.
FAQ
Does the standard know about the software meaning?
No. Its six CLDR keywords and its one cross-reference are all about post and parcels.
Can it be shown in black and white?
You can ask, with U+FE0E after it. Whether a text glyph exists is up to the font.
What is it cross-referenced to?
The wrapped present, and nothing else.
Is there an HTML entity?
No named one. Write 📦 or 📦.