Unicode Emoji 5.0 characters now final

[Ken Whistler]

On 3/27/2017 12:17 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
> announcements at Unicode dot org wrote:
>
>> — and new regional flags for England, Scotland, and Wales.
> It's not clear from this text, nor from the table in Section C.1.1 of
> the draft, what the status is of flag emoji tag sequences other than the
> three above.
>
> I read the relevant section a couple of times and could not figure out
> how a "standard sequence" differs from a non-standard one, or how
> ordinary users are supposed to know the difference. The term "standard
> sequence" appears nowhere in the draft except as a table header.

The terminology is still a bit in flux, which is why the text of UTS #51 
is still under review, before being finalized at the UTC meeting in May.

But the data for Emoji 5.0 is final, and there are precisely 3 "emoji 
tag sequences" in the relevant data file:

http://www.unicode.org/Public/emoji/5.0/emoji-sequences.txt

As for how "users" are supposed to know the difference. Well, they 
don't. What matters is that the data file that the "implementers" will 
use has these 3 emoji tag sequences in it, so that is quite likely what 
everybody will see added to their phones. The "users" will just see 3 
more flags. And if they want a flag of California (or whatever), then 
they need to badger the platform vendors, who will then come back to the 
Emoji SC, saying, "Help! We need to add a flag of California, or people 
won't buy our phones!" And if a flag of California (or Pomerania or ...) 
then gets added to the list of emoji tag sequences in a future version 
of the data, there is a good chance that the "users" will then see the 
difference, because that flag will appear on their phones eventually.

Anybody could *attempt* to convey a flag of Pomerania (a rather handsome 
black gryphon on a yellow background, btw) with an emoji tag sequence 
right now, I suppose. Good luck on any input support or actual 
interoperability or availability in any font on any standard platform, 
however. You'd just get fallback display. If conveying flags of 
Pomerania is in your near term future, I'd advise sticking to images. ;-)

--Ken

>
> Vendors always have the option of supporting or not supporting a glyph
> for any code point or sequence -- note 4 in Section C.1 and the second
> sentence in C.1.1 both reinforce this long-standing principle -- so
> there must be something more here.
>