Re: Emoji: emoticons vs. literacy

From: Michael D'Errico (mike-list@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2009 - 19:37:50 CST

  • Next message: Leo Broukhis: "Re: Emoji: emoticons vs. literacy"

    > Why limit the emoji alphabet to ASCII, then?

    Because all of the scripts in planes C & D would be the same, and since
    the most recognized small subset of Unicode is ASCII, it is a natural
    choice. I've read on this list that you need over 8,000 Kanji as a bare
    minimum for communication, so to include all the worlds languages in the
    subset so that nobody is left out would require at least 14 bits; thus
    you would only get a maximum of 4 per plane instead of 255. Plus you'd
    avoid the need for the complex rendering needed for many scripts.

    However, if there was enough demand for a different subset, the UTC could
    encode it somewhere else.

    > Instead of
    > duplicating all the world alphabets in the "emoji" space, why not have
    > just two characters: EMOJI LEFT QUOTE and EMOJI RIGHT QUOTE (are these
    > names BiDi-compliant?)

    Because this creates "emoji mode" and modes are bad. (Sometimes I see
    people say that state is bad when they really mean to say that modes are
    bad.) In my proposal, all the characters are from an artificial emoji
    script so "normal" characters (from the BMP, etc.) don't need to be
    interpreted differently in a different mode.

    Mike



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