Emoji (was: Re: Unicode block for programming related symbols and codepoints?)

[Doug Ewell]

Shervin Afshar <shervinafshar at gmail dot com> wrote:

>> There is no longer any requirement that the robot faces and
>> burritos appear first in any sort of industry character set
>> extension, with which Unicode is then obliged to maintain
>> compatibility.
>
> Only if you don't consider existing usage and popular requests as
> requirement and precedence; for example Gmail had Robot Face for a
> long time.

I said there was no longer a requirement *that the items appear first in
an industry character set extension*, right?

In what character encoding standard, or extension, does ROBOT FACE
appear? "Gmail has it" is not a character encoding standard. Neither is
"People want to see it."

"Most popularly requested," as a criterion for adding a character, is
absolutely new to Unicode. Earlier I wrote privately to a Unicode
officer about whether PERSON TAKING SELFIE and GIRL TWERKING and PERSON
DUMPING ICE BUCKET OVER HEAD would be ephemeral enough, and got no
reply. (What, you've forgotten the ice-bucket craze already? That's
exactly why "most popular at the moment" wasn't supposed to be a
criterion.)

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, USA | http://ewellic.org