Re: Emoji: National Flag Symbols

From: Christopher Fynn (cfynn@gmx.net)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2008 - 21:35:37 CST


Kenneth Whistler wrote:

> The emoji proposal should, IMO, encode precisely 10 EMOJI COMPATIBILITY
> SYMBOL FOR FLAG OF XXX characters and we done with it. These should be
> documented as interoperability characters for mapping these
> SJIS gaiji extensions for wireless vendors. End of story.

> It should not be opened up to a general scheme for registering
> the flag of any country, current or future, in an open-ended
> matter. That is just guaranteed to be the kind of endless
> headache that Chris Fynn was warning about. The 676 positions
> for possible country codes won't suffice, nor will the justification
> that only *national* flags could be encoded as characters stand
> up. And the whole issue of flag characters is something that
> will sidetrack the entire emoji symbols proposals when it gets
> into the ISO context.

> Better than heading that route would be to cross off the
> 10 flag symbols (like the logos) as yet more emoji which cannot
> be mapped to characters at all, but which will need to be
> mapped to strings, as they are for the DoCoMo cross-mappings.

Yes - any encoding of *specific* flags opens up a barrel of worms and,
in the end, encoding almost every national flag seems inevitable. But
then, if we have coloured flags, how about e.g. nautical signal flags -
surely these better qualify as a "writing system"....

- C

> --Ken
>
>
>



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