From: James Kass (thunder-bird@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2008 - 15:07:16 CST
Kenneth Whistler wrote,
>Chris Fynn responded:
>
>> Clark S. Cox III wrote:
>> > îîîî
(If your e-mail system does not support UTF-8, how will
inclusion of emoji in Unicode generate correct display
on your system?)
>> > <snip>
>>
>> which displayed as in the attached png - nothing that looks like
>> the sun, rain, a cloud or a snowman.
>
>Which I think is rather the point, in a nutshell.
Proper display of PUA characters depends on proper installation
and selection of an appropriate font.
A search engine which disallows PUA string searches and fails
to index PUA web pages does a disservice to its users, in my
opinion.
Citing inability to correctly display PUA characters as a reason
for inclusion in Unicode would appear to open the floodgates
for any PUA exchange.
Doug Ewell has suggested a frequency-of-use analysis of individual
proposed characters. I think such an analysis would be informative
and instructive. Just because a phone vendor includes something
in its set doesn't mean anybody is actually using it.
It's been alleged that some of this material is leaking out of closed
systems and infiltrating databases and so forth. Of course, one
solution would be to find and plug those leaks. But, failing that,
may we please see some concrete examples of this along with an
explanation of why it is a problem?
The nature of these proposed characters strikes me as ephemeral.
Text messages sent between cell phone users appear to be transient.
(You send your friend a text message including emotional overtones
indicated with emoticons. She reads your message, laughs or cries,
then deletes it.)
The fact that this set is still evolving indicates that encoding may
be premature.
Best regards,
James Kass
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jan 02 2009 - 15:33:07 CST