Re: Emoji: emoticons vs. literacy

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Sat Jan 10 2009 - 06:35:22 CST

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    On 10 Jan 2009, at 09:03, Christopher Fynn wrote:

    > Michael Everson wrote:
    >
    >> On 9 Jan 2009, at 22:48, André Szabolcs Szelp wrote:
    >>>> Let's ignore, for the moment, that emoji are actually emoji, and
    >>>> just
    >>>> treat them as characters that are up for potential encoding. I do
    >>>> think
    >>>> that a part of them may not be up to the requirements for ISO/
    >>>> Unicode
    >>>> standardization. The ones that are up the requirements should be
    >>>> encoded, for others, vendors should use PUA.
    >>>
    >>> This is something I do fully agree with.
    >> I also agree.
    >
    > If on grounds of "interoperability" and "source separation" there is
    > truly a need to encode them *all* (bar the trademarked logos) why
    > not set aside 600+ characters on plane 14, give them all generic
    > names name like "EMOJI SYMBOL XXX" and be done with it?

    Because a lot of them are, you know, "symbols". I've no objection to
    many of them. And as I have said (posted twice) once in the UCS these
    won't be "emoji" symbols any more. You can't say that the emoji
    smileys aren't generic. They are.

    > OTOH if we are going to go through the process of looking at each of
    > them individually, just like any other potential symbol characters
    > proposed for encoding, I also think there is a lot of stuff that
    > would not normally qualify.

    That is what we should do. Evaluate them all in the normal fashion.
    Just as we did with the North Korean symbols.

    > Unifying some of these emoji with existing characters implies that
    > they are to be treated just like any other proposed characters - in
    > which case I don't think it is fair for anyone to expect special
    > treatment for this proposal.

    Exactly.

    Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com



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