QID emoji (from Re: The encoding of flags)

[William_J_G Overington]

James Kass wrote:

> Anybody can use any Unicode string as a pointer into anyone's database 
> without seeking Unicode's permission.

At present, with a couple of people, emails are sent between me and them 
using

!123

to mean

Good day.

or its equivalent in the recipient's language of choice. It is just 
friendly.

A more rugged format is an integral sign followed by circled digits. Is 
it a sort of mathematics? Possibly, as it is expressing information in a 
way that the information can be manipulated.

So, no problem.

However, although I suggest the possibility of using, if Unicode Inc. 
were to formally encode it, the base character of the QID proposal 
followed by a TAG EXCLAMATION MARK followed by some TAG DIGITs followed 
by a CANCEL TAG, it seems to me that it would not be correct to 
implement it without such formality.

It is hard to say exactly why that is my opinion. I suppose that it is 
because the first one looks much like using hashtags, the second looks 
like mathematics, yet the third one looks cy-près (so near) what Unicode 
Inc. does with sequences such as for some flags that it would not be 
right to do so without formal Unicode approval.

> What this means is that a vendor like Apple or Google could set up to 
> provide users with a plethora of new emoji glyphs/images using the 
> blueprint offered in the QID Emoji proposal.  And Unicode wouldn't 
> need to take any action or make any approval of it.  And if the major 
> vendors lacked interest, third-partiers could step up to the plate. 
> If there was sufficient user demand for it.

Well, possibly, but what about issues of clashes between intellectual 
property rights and the desire for unambiguous and interoperable use 
across platforms? If the scenario you suggest happened it could possibly 
lead to the sort of problems that happened before The Unicode Standard 
was produced and resolved them.

William Overington

Friday 8 October 2021



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