Re: Encoding of Emoji in SMS, and UCS-2 vs UTF-16

I would think all standards that specify the use of UCS-2 should be updated to specify UTF-16 instead. There is simply no excuse for any technology that deals with characters to be arbitrarily limited to the BMP.
 
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Doug Ewell • doug_at_ewellic.org
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: Craig McQueen <craig.mcqueen_at_beamcommunications.com>
Sender: unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 19:16:25
To: unicode_at_unicode.org<unicode_at_unicode.org>
Subject: RE: Encoding of Emoji in SMS, and UCS-2 vs UTF-16

From: unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org] On Behalf Of Craig McQueen
Sent: Tuesday, 16 August 2011 1:28 PM
To: unicode_at_unicode.org
Subject: Encoding of Emoji in SMS, and UCS-2 vs UTF-16

The SMS standard specifies UCS-2 encoding:
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/html-info/23038.htm

I see many “emoji” have been defined in Unicode 6. But many emoji are outside the BMP, so can’t be encoded in UCS-2. Does anyone know, is the intention that these emoji should be encoded in SMS using UTF-16 rather than UCS-2? Are there any plans in-progress to update the SMS standards to specify UTF-16 rather than UCS-2?

Perhaps this question could be added to the Emoji FAQ. http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html

Regards,
Craig McQueen



I haven’t heard from anyone regarding this. Should I ask on some GSM or other mobile standards mailing list instead?

I do think it would be worth adding to the Unicode Emoji FAQ though.

Regards,
Craig McQueen

Received on Sun Aug 28 2011 - 21:43:07 CDT