From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Fri Jan 09 2009 - 18:18:43 CST
> > Nice try, Leo. But the emoji set is completely enumerated,
> > in cross-tabular full splendor.
>
> Completely? Is e-1E3 CRAB in or out, then? Why or why not?
You're mixing up the decisions about encoding particular
emoji (or unifying with existing characters, or leaving them
unencoded) with the argument you were trying to make claiming
that the set of emoji wasn't sufficiently closed or well-known
to make pre-allocation possible.
*This* set of emoji is very well-defined, indeed.
Whether you think e-1E3 CRAB should or should not actually be
encoded is an entirely separate matter.
And if you want my opinion about the matter, then yes, I agree
with Marc Crispin. The value in encoding the emoji set is basically
in encoding the entire set (minus the logos ;-) ). I see no
benefit whatsoever in leaving out e-1E3 CRAB, simply because
someone thinks the subrange of animal pictographs is somehow
unworthy of encoding in Unicode.
> Where's the (at least de facto) guarantee that in a year, or three, or
> five, ...
What the heck could a "de facto" guarantee about a future
event be?
> there will not be another 618*N characters because vendors will
> have decided to ...
[omitting a long list of strawman silly things that are
unlikely to happen]
Well, if you want a non-de facto guarantee, I'll give you a
guarantee that I don't think it will happen, because it isn't
in the telco business interests to multiply their gaiji sets
by a factor of "N", particularly if an interoperable Unicode
solution is available for them that doesn't corrupt their
current data and lets them interoperate more-or-less seamlessly
with the rest of the world's Unicode infrastructure.
> How many columns will be definitely enough to pre-allocate for emoji?
I'll venture a wild guess: 32 (U+1F300..U+1F4FF).
Wanna bet?
> >> Or would using Kikakui encoded in PUA in cell phones make it
> >> immediately eligible for encoding?
> >
> > Here you go:
> >
> > http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/
> >
> > Contact them and get started on your business case for adding
> > Kikakui to their phones.
>
> I am just asking if it would make it eligible as far as UTC is concerned.
If the 3 major Japanese telco's implemented it as SJIS gaiji
characters, cross-mapped to each other, and a 100 million
users started sending Kikakui email to the internet, you betcha.
An unlikely scenario, however, as Kikakui is used "perhaps by less
than 500 people" in Sierra Leone.
However, if you look more closely, "Mende" is already in the
Roadmap for the SMP (16A40..16AFF), despite the fact that it
is a (relatively) recently constructed script of very, very
marginal current usage. If you have an interest in seeing its
encoding speeded up for Unicode, there is a way to do that:
http://www.unicode.org/pending/proposals.html
--Ken
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