Why so much emoji nonsense?

Mark Davis ☕️ via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Fri Feb 16 04:04:54 CST 2018


A few points

1. To add to what Asmus said, see also
http://unicode.org/L2/L2018/18044-encoding-emoji.pdf

"Their encoding, surprisingly, has been a boon for language support. The
emoji draw on Unicode
mechanisms that are used by various languages, but which had been
incompletely implemented on
many platforms. Because of the demand for emoji, many implementations have
upgraded their
Unicode support substantially. That means that implementations now have far
better support for the
languages that use the more complicated Unicode mechanisms."

An example of that is MySQL, where the rise of emoji led to non-BMP support.


2. Aside from SEI (at UCB), we've also been able to fund a number of
projects such as
http://blog.unicode.org/2016/12/adopt-character-grant-to-support-indic.html


4. Finally, I'd like to point out that this external mailing list is open
to anyone (subject to civil behavior), with the main goal being to provide
a forum for people to ask questions about how to deploy, use, and
contribute to Unicode, and get answers from a community of users.

Those who want to engage in extended kvetching can take that to the
rightful place: *Twitter*.

Mark






Mark

On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 9:25 AM, Asmus Freytag via Unicode <
unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

> On 2/15/2018 11:54 PM, James Kass via Unicode wrote:
>
> Pierpaolo Bernardi wrote:
>
>
> But it's always a good time to argue against the addition of more
> nonsense to what we already have got.
>
> It's an open-ended set and precedent for encoding them exists.
> Generally, input regarding the addition of characters to a repertoire
> is solicited from the user community, of which I am not a member.
>
> My personal feeling is that all of the time, effort, and money spent
> by the various corporations in promoting the emoji into Unicode would
> have been better directed towards something more worthwhile, such as
> the unencoded scripts listed at:
>
>      http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/scripts-not-encoded.html
>
> ... but nobody asked me.
>
>
> Curiously enough it is the emoji that keep a large number of users (and
> companies
> serving them) engaged with Unicode who would otherwise be likely to come
> to the conclusion that Unicode is "done" as far as their needs are
> concerned.
>
> Few, if any, of the not-yet-encoded scripts are used by large living
> populations,
> therefore they are not urgently missing / needed in daily life and are of
> interest
> primarily to specialists.
>
> Emoji are definitely up-ending that dynamic, which I would argue is a good
> thing.
>
> A financially well endowed Consortium with strong membership is a
> prerequisite
> to fulfilling the larger cultural mission of Unicode. Sure, for the
> populations
> whose scripts are already encoded, there are separate issues that will keep
> some interest alive, like solving problems related to algorithms and
> locales, but
> also dealing with extensions of existing scripts and notational systems -
> although
> few enough of those are truly urgent/widely used.
>
> The University of Berkeley people would be the first to tell you how their
> funding
> puncture is positively influenced by the current perceived relevancy of
> the Unicode
> Consortium - much of it being due to those emoji.
>
> A./
>
>
>
>
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