Unicode Emoji 5.0 characters now final

[Peter Constable]

Would "are not very likely to be well-supported in common platforms or applications" work?


Peter



-----Original Message-----
From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces at unicode.org] On Behalf Of Doug Ewell
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 10:38 AM
To: Mark Davis ☕️ <mark at macchiato.com>
Cc: Asmus Freytag <asmusf at ix.netcom.com>; Unicode Mailing List <unicode at unicode.org>
Subject: RE: Unicode Emoji 5.0 characters now final

Mark Davis wrote:

> Ken's observation "…approximately backwards…" is exactly right, and 
> that's the same reason why Markus suggested something along the lines 
> of "interoperable".

If the list was arrived at by members of the Consortium who are vendors responsible for implementing (or not) emoji flags, then it would be good to state this fact rather clearly and visibly. Otherwise it really does look like UTC doing the recommending, and the recommending-against.

> I don't think we've come up with a pithy category name yet, but I 
> tried different wording on the slides on http://unicode.org/emoji/.
> See what you think, Doug.

Slide 37 (speaker's notes) says:

"While at this point only three flags are on the recommended list, implementations can provide other subdivision flags."

That's not a problem, except for being buried in speaker's notes. It implies that all valid sequences are fine but some might not be universally supported. That's normal for Unicode.

Slide 38 (slide and speaker's notes) says:

"Valid (but not recommended for vendors)"

Nope. That brings it right back to "Hey, vendors, Unicode recommends that you don't support these." As I said Thursday, if that is the intent, then don't change the wording; it's perfect as is.

The wordsmithing -- if that's all it is and not truly a warning-against
-- needs to apply primarily to the "not recommended" category. I suggested "additional" to remove the explicit negative of "not recommended" and "Standard? - No." In today's tread-lightly speech, "not recommended" has the strong sense of "recommended against." Eating poison ivy is Not Recommended.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org