Why so much emoji nonsense?

Phake Nick via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Fri Feb 16 00:04:12 CST 2018


2018-02-16 10:46, "James Kass" <jameskasskrv at gmail.com> wrote

Phake Nick wrote,

> By the standard of "if one can't string word together that speak for
> themselves can use otger media", then we can scrap Unicode and simply use
> voice recording for all the purposes. →_→

Not for me, I can still type faster than I can talk.  Besides, voice
recordings are all about communicating by stringing words together.


There are thousands of situations where one would want to express something
in text form instead of voice form other than to be fast. Voice
communication isn't just about communicating "string of words" together.
Emotion and any other rhibgs are also transferred. That's also why carriers
are supporting HQ Voice transmission over telephony system for better
clarity in this aspect.


>> These are rhetorical questions.
>
> Tonal emoticon for telephone or voice transmission? There are tones for
> voice based transmission system
> And yes, there are limits in these technology which make teleconferencing
> still not all that popular and people still have to fly across the world
> just to attend all different sort of meetings.

At least, that's what they tell their accountants and tax people, right?

Then why do those people who pay for their own trip still do so?

> […]

2018-02-16 11:27, "James Kass via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

If someone were to be smiling and shrugging while giving you the
finger, would you be smiling too?

Heck, I'd probably be laughing out loud while running for my life!
So, poor example.  OK.  A smiling creep is still a creep.

This is an example of extravocal communication. If the person was sayong
thankyou with smiling face while giving you a middle finger, it would be
totally different context from a regular thank you goven by other people.


Suppose for a moment that you and I are pals in the same room having a
face-to-face conversation.  I advise you that, due to unforeseen
events, I'm a bit financially strapped and could use a spot of cash to
sort of tide me over until my ship comes into orbit.  You smile and
nod your head while saying "no".  Which response applies?

Words suffice.  We go by what people actually say rather than whatever
they might have meant.  When we read text, we go by what's written.

Then, what would be the feeling of the listener if he onky hear you say no
but didn't know about your facial and body reaction? They might not be able
to grasp the pevep of no you are giving out, and you would want to use some
rather lengthy description to explain to the person why you want to reject
him. Why do that when a simple non-verbal expression is enough?

An inability to communicate any essential feelings and overtones using
words is not a gross failure of either language or writing.  It's more
about the skill levels of the speaker, listener, author, and reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication


As for the thread title question, perhaps the exchanges within the
thread offer insight.  Emoji exist and are interchanged.  Unicode
enables them to be interchanged in a standard fashion.  Even if
they're just for fun, frivolous, silly, and ephemeral.  Even if some
people consider them beyond the scope of The Unicode Standard.  The
best time to argue against the addition of emoji to Unicode would be
2007 or 2008, but you'd be wasting your time travel.  Trust me.

I would like to add that, if Unicode didn't include emoji at the time, then
I suspect many more systems will continue to use Shift-JIS instead.
Individual mobile phone carriers will continue to use each of their own
provate codepoints and app/platform developers either have to find a way to
convert between code point between different emoji being used (remember
implementation by each carriers don't strictly correspond to each other),
or invent yet another private use font to correspond to each of all those
emoji within their platform.
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