Re: Emoticons (was: Root and fraction (2 new symbols))

From: Andreas Stötzner (as@signographie.de)
Date: Sat Oct 13 2007 - 15:04:52 CDT

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    Am 8. Okt 2007 um 18:34 schrieb Marion Gunn:

    > …

    > . Whatever happened to 'dingbats', as a technical term? Took me a long
    > time to get used to that one, and even longer to get to like it, but
    > now that I do, it, too, seems to be out of fashion. Is "emoticon" now
    > the official technical term by which all such symbols must be
    > collectively referred to in all IT standards dealing with them?

    Good heavens, no. “Emoticons”, “dingbats” are just slang terms which
    are used by technicians (who rule the standardisation business) instead
    of professional definitions. “Symbols” is still regarded by many as a
    kind of playground off the serious track of “text”. This is the
    problem.

    In which way(s) the usage of non-alphabetic characters does affect the
    very development of writing (=texting) behaviour today and tomorrow,
    this question I would like to see on the character encoding business
    agenda.

    The mere fact that a Unicode block named “Dingbats” exists is a mess.

    :-)
    A:S



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