From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Tue Mar 10 2009 - 17:50:25 CST
On 10 Mar 2009, at 23:19, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>>> While I do not
>> think that we should encode CHINESE ZODIAC DRAGON and CHINESE ZODIAC
>> RABBIT, the fact is that in encoding DRAGON and RABBIT we are
>> encoding
>> characters which can (and should) be used for those functions.
>
> I disagree again. The character for CHINESE ZODIAC DRAGON
> is U+9F8D.
No, I think. Emphatically no, indeed. Why? Because the Chinese Zodiac
signs are used outside of China where Chinese characters are
meaningless. A calendar in Kazakhstan or Vietnam for instance might
use the Chinese Zodiac but will very likely not have any Chinese on it.
> It isn't represented as an emoji of a dragon. Although that doesn't
> stop people, of course, from using pictures of animals to
> represent the Chinese zodiacal signs, any more than it prevents
> Western astrologists from using pictures of mythical figures
> and beasts to represent Western zodiacal signs.
I don't think it is the same thing. I don't think it is normal or
expected to draw CJK characters as pictographic symbols. That is
different from the long
>> It does not matter what Japanese telecoms are using them for.
>
> Actually, it does.
Asserting this does not make it so.
>> It must be understood that once any of these characters are
>> encoded, they
>> CEASE to be "emoji" symbols,
>
> No, they don't.
Oh yes, they do, and I really hope you take this concept on board if
you want success encoding these characters in WG2.
Every character in the standard can be used by everyone, regardless of
the origin of the characters. The reason the UTC is requesting these
symbols maybe interoperability with a particular environment, but
EVERY ONE of those characters will simply be a pictographic symbol in
the standard, available for any use, not restricted to cellular
telephony.
As such, they must be considered in that wider context.
>> and are just plain old Symbols for Use By Anybody who wants to use
>> the Universal Character set.
>
> They may *additionally* be interpreted as plain old symbols for
> arbitrary use by anybody else, to mean whatever they think they
> should mean.
Oh, come on. Not "whatever they think they should mean". The FIRE
ENGINE is not ambiguous as to its meaning. Nor is a RABBIT. The
Chinese Zodiac makes use of a rabbit and I really don't think it's a
stretch to expect an encoded RABBIT to be used for that purpose -- or
that it would be better to encode a different rabbit pictogram for the
zodiacal use.
> But such use is buyer-beware when picked out of sets encoded for
> other purposes.
What are you on about? The SMOKING and NO SMOKING characters are part
of the emoji set. Its use in Japanese telephony is as accidental as
the use of the plain old ordinary SMILEY FACE. It's certainly
conceivable that the NO SMOKING character could well have been encoded
already for other reasons had someone done up a proposal for it.
> Grabbing a couple of animal emoji out of a big set of such
> (including many that manifestly nothing to do with zodiacal signs,
> such as SNAIL, PENGUIN, OCTOPUS, HAMSTER,
> POODLE, ...), and claiming that in RABBIT and DRAGON "we are
> encoding characters which can (and should) be used for [the Chinese
> zodiacal] functions" strikes me as just such
> a buyer-beware mistake.
Not at all. I read the emoji animal set as a superset, which contains
within it the animals used in Chinese astrology. I don't think that's
a stretch, and indeed I'm not the only one who noticed.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
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