Emotes

Mark E. Shoulson mark at kli.org
Thu Aug 4 16:54:57 CDT 2022


The question wasn't about emoji or inline image content; it was about 
"emotes", a technique of phrasing chat messages in third person instead 
of first person.  I have no idea what this has to do with Unicode, any 
more than chat-forum conventions like spelling "you" as "u" or using 
CAPITALS to shout with.  That is, they're transmitted by means of 
Unicode, but they're content and not form or protocol, and Unicode 
doesn't dictate content.

~mark

On 8/4/22 17:07, Sławomir Osipiuk via Unicode wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2022 at 12:10 PM William_J_G Overington via Unicode
> <unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:
>> Can we discuss emotes please?
>>
> Inline image content is very firmly outside the scope of Unicode and
> practically screams "higher-level protocol".
>
> We should not be inventing yet another markup and/or syntax for things
> that are solved problems. If you want to embed images in your text,
> use an <img> tag with a base64 data-URI or an external URL, as
> appropriate.
>
> The one legitimate issue is that maybe you want the syntax to be
> default-ignorable "for free" on platforms that don't support it and
> the existing unicode tag characters look mighty tempting. In that
> area, the Unicode Standard can be a little helpful by clarifying and
> formalizing the permitted use of tag characters for other protocols,
> but it should in no way be defining those protocols itself. Maybe
> declare U+E0010 through U+E001F private-use.
>
> That's about it. Unicode is for text. Even emoji as single characters
> are a pretty big stretch. Emoji ZWJ sequences even more so. I don't
> think we should be stretching any further.
>
> Sławomir Osipiuk


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