Tags and emoji

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2024-04-05 13:31, William_J_G Overington via Unicode wrote:
>
> …So I write to seek opinions please on whether it would be a good idea 
> that that tag format could be applied so as to uniquely encode all 
> those acceptable emoji that have been formally proposed to Unicode 
> Inc. yet have not been selected for the annual quota.
>
> The emoji thus encoded might not become implemented by mainstream 
> platform businesses yet there could be good opportunities for 
> independent artists and fontmakers and would go some way to bringing a 
> good result to the proposers of otherwise unencoded emoji proposals. 
> If there were a practice that fonts supporting in whole or in part 
> such emoji had visible glyphs for the tag digit characters, an 
> unsupported tag emoji would be indicated by the displayed digit sequence.…
>
In my humble opinion, no, this would not be a good idea.

The underlying issue is that people want to mix pictures with their text.

You are pointing out all the ways that using the mechanism of text to 
deliver the pictures to the text stream is difficult. One must persuade 
the UTC to encode the picture as an emoji. Platform businesses must 
support the emoji in fonts and input methods. Font makers must add the 
picture to their fonts. Users must learn that the picture is available 
as an emoji, and use it. Because of all this external cost, the UTC 
encoding process appropriately includes high barriers to entry.

Why not take all that energy, and put it towards encouraging application 
developers to provide ways to mix pictures as pictures into the text 
stream?  Sometimes these pictures are called "seals", or "stamps", or 
"reactions". Once the application developer allows users to insert 
arbitrary pictures into the text stream, then users can directly ask the 
independent artists for images matching the proposed emoji which did not 
meet the annual quota, and use them immediately. There need be no wait 
for an encoding process, or platform support, or anything else.

Why is it so terribly important to use the mechanism of text to deliver 
pictures in text, instead of using a application-based mechanism of 
mixed text and pictures?

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt, Vancouver, Canada


-- 
.   --Jim DeLaHunt,jdlh at jdlh.com      http://blog.jdlh.com/  (http://jdlh.com/)
       multilingual websites consultant, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
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