Encoding ConScripts

[James Kass]

On 2021-10-13 11:37 AM, William_J_G Overington via Unicode responded:
>
>> Encoding emoji was an anomaly prompted by peculiar circumstances and 
>> a unique chain of events.
>
> I would say 'particular' rather than 'peculiar'.
>
>> Nobody should ever cite it as precedent, so of course everybody will. 
>> Sigh.
>
> No, it is a precedent. The rules were changed for emoji. So on a sauce 
> for pasta is sauce for rice basis, as the Unicode Technical Committee 
> has changed the rules for one set of particular circumstances, it can 
> change them again for other particular circumstances. 

Certain principles were violated when emoji penetrated Unicode 
plain-text.  In order to accommodate emoji, a special class was 
established along with a different set of encoding principles covering 
that new class.

A crucial difference exists between most everything William has ever 
proposed and initial emoji encoding.  Pre-existing "characters" were 
already being interchanged by users and were very, very popular. 
Conflicting character sets existed which impacted cross-platform 
interchange.  Decisions were made to move forward in spite of vehement 
opposition.  (There was also an adamant group of emoji supporters, of 
course.)

For additions to the emoji set, the special emoji principles admit 
speculative characters based on certain special criteria and hurdles.  
So it would be tempting to anyone inventing novel glyphs to try to get 
those inventions into Unicode as "emoji", because there is no other 
path.  But the emoji principles reject "abstract emoji" from 
consideration for a pictographic character set.  A request to review 
that abstraction rejection on an unrelated or marginally related public 
feedback blog may not really put anything on the table for the committee 
to review, so it may well have been overlooked.  A formal proposal might 
be better for prompting discussion and consideration.

William acknowledges that the Mariposa System is essentially mark-up.  
See here:
https://lists.aau.at/pipermail/mpeg-otspec/2021-May/002766.html
(A fascinating thread, BTW.  My respect to Peter Constable and Vladimir 
Levantovsky for their professionalism in that thread.)  But William 
apparently considers it desirable for these glyphs also to be encoded as 
characters, although I've no idea why, saucy pasta notwithstanding.

Over the years, many of us have tried to provide helpful, honest 
suggestions and pointers while remaining tolerably polite.  Trying to 
drum up support for abstract emoji (and whatnot) on technical discussion 
lists doesn't seem to be working out.  Social media platforms and other 
places where emoji users congregate might be a better target for 
publicity and for garnering support / generating usage.