Comment in a leading German newspaper regarding the way UTC and Apple handle Emoji as an attack on Free Speech

[Doug Ewell]

> ("The Unicode Consortium appears like a reissue of Orwell's Ministry
> of Truth, which replaced the English language by a new one, sweeped
> clean from harmful terms, and which removed "unorthodox" connotations
> from the rest of the words.")

So I took another look and saw that:

(1) U+1F946 RIFLE has the following cross-reference in NamesList.txt:

= marksmanship, shooting, hunting

which does not include any mention of squirt guns or water pistols, or
generally bowdlerizing the image or changing the intent of this code
point;

(2) Section 22.9 "Miscellaneous Symbols" in TUS 9.0 does not make any
mention of modifying the RIFLE glyph, or symbol glyphs in general, so as
to alter their meaning;

(3) the code chart at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F900.pdf
clearly shows a rifle, and not any other type of gun or non-gun.

I can imagine people with time on their hands criticizing Apple for
changing the glyph, but how did the Unicode Consortium itself get
dragged into this? What obvious thing am I missing?
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org