From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2008 - 19:37:17 CST
> What we concluded is that we would propose that the characters
> be allocated in a
> block that had enough positions for the non-private use country codes
> (that is 676
> combinations - AA, ZZ, QM..QZ, XA..XZ).
By the way, lest everybody on the list think that I've just
"drunk the koolaid" on this topic of emoji, I personally part
company with the symbols subcommittee and the UTC on this
suggested outcome, which I think is just nuts.
> Part of proposing characters is a willingness to step up to producing
> the fonts for
> representative glyphs for these. While that is not part of the emoji
> proposal (there
> is quite enough on that plate already), this would provide a framework
> for others to
> propose their own flag characters in this new block.
Which I also consider nuts.
The emoji proposal should, IMO, encode precisely 10 EMOJI COMPATIBILITY
SYMBOL FOR FLAG OF XXX characters and we done with it. These should be
documented as interoperability characters for mapping these
SJIS gaiji extensions for wireless vendors. End of story.
It should not be opened up to a general scheme for registering
the flag of any country, current or future, in an open-ended
matter. That is just guaranteed to be the kind of endless
headache that Chris Fynn was warning about. The 676 positions
for possible country codes won't suffice, nor will the justification
that only *national* flags could be encoded as characters stand
up. And the whole issue of flag characters is something that
will sidetrack the entire emoji symbols proposals when it gets
into the ISO context.
Better than heading that route would be to cross off the
10 flag symbols (like the logos) as yet more emoji which cannot
be mapped to characters at all, but which will need to be
mapped to strings, as they are for the DoCoMo cross-mappings.
--Ken
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