From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Dec 29 2008 - 04:35:24 CST
On 12/28/2008 1:36 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> David Starner wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 5:59 AM, Jukka K. Korpela
>> <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
>>> What tangible benefits would there be to anyone?
>>
>> Our local forum software persists in turning 8) (as in Math and
>> Science (7 of 8)) into a emoticon. This behavior could be fixed easier
>> if there were an alternative character for that emoticon. Furthermore,
>> said character would be more likely to survive cutting and pasting as
>> an emoticon.
>
> Sorry, I cannot follow the logic. If some software turns 8) into a
> small image, then this is either an error or intentional behavior. In
> this case, it is probably intentional, and the question arises whether
> and how the feature can be switched off by users; but this a practical
> software issue (which would equally exist if the characters were
> turned into an emoticon character).
>
>
The problem stems from the fact that in this kind of scenario 8) is no
longer unique in the encoding sense. In order to determine whether text
containing 8) intends to encode the digit eight followed by the close
paren or in fact intends to encode an emoticon you now need out of band
information. Requiring out of band information for text content is
certainly not ideal. Therefore, if there were dedicated character codes
for emoticons (especially those using short, and therefore commonly
occurring strings of punctuation marks as fallbacks) the ability to used
them as a unique way to encode common emoticons would be a definite benefit.
A./
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