From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Wed Oct 28 2009 - 15:23:10 CST
From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Doug Ewell
>> There are, in fact, applications that support private emoji sets,
>> generally by expanding text like ":)".
>I'm seeing a bit of a contradiction between this statement and the following one,
> which is the one we were all given when we asked about emoji proliferation:
>> Remember, the use of characters to encode emoji is pretty universally
>> felt to be a Very Bad Thing(tm). The flame wars have been pretty much
>> about whether or not it is a Necessary Evil(tm), and whether or not it
>> will be taken as a Precedent for the Future(tm).
> If someone is building apps to support private emoji sets, evidently they
> must not feel it is such a bad idea, and might indeed treat the first wave of
> encoding as a precedent.
Doug, you are confusing encoding emoji _as coded characters_ versus representing emoji _using a text-based protocol_. ":)" is not a character, it is a character sequence. Using that to represent an emoji is comparable to using à to represent a Latin character. In each case, only certain applications support the protocol, recognizing the given sequence and interpreting it as a single entity.
Thus, the practice John refers to is not at all an instance of the proliferation that was referred to in the aforementioned "flame wars" and does not imply that those implementers must not feel proliferation is a bad idea.
Peter
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Oct 28 2009 - 15:26:28 CST