Re: Emoji: emoticons vs. literacy

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2009 - 03:34:39 CST

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    On 1/12/2009 12:21 AM, Christopher Fynn wrote:
    > If the criteia for encoding compatibility characters is different from
    > that of ordinary characters - then perhaps they should be encoded in a
    > block seperate from ordinary characters and not mixed together or
    > unified.
     
    The problem with this type of thinking is that any set proposed for
    compatibility contains with some probability characters that are in fact
    "ordinary" characters, in other words it contains some characters that
    could have been encoded on their own. A formal determination on a
    character-by-character basis of which are true compatibility characters
    and which are (or could be seen as) ordinary characters has not been
    made in the past, so the precedent is one of mixed allocation. And even
    if you wanted to make a firm distinction from now on, it's not always
    easy to settle which is which.
     
    > If this whole group is required for interoperability ~ then
    > encode the whole group on one of the upper planes as a single block of
    > emoji compatibility characters. This would give us the whole lot
    > claimed necessary for interoperability and avoid the PUA or markup.
    For interoperability you'd want to get full coverage, of course, that's
    the goal. But characters that are related to existing characters are
    sometimes better encoded in proximity to their counterparts, than
    together with characters from the same compatibility set.

    That's been the practice in Unicode from the beginning. Over the long
    run, users are better off it such practices are followed more or less
    consistently over time.

    A./

    PS: It's interesting, actually scary, how many suggestions are being
    made in this discussion that would change rather well-established
    practice in extending the Unicode standard.



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