Additional Emoji selection factor: Support by "Major Vendors"

Mark Davis ☕️ <mark_at_macchiato.com>:
>
> In order to understand the status of any document in the registry, you need to also look at the minutes of the meeting where they are discussed, in this case: http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16121.htm
>
>> B.14.3 Provisional value for Emoji property [Emoji SC/Edberg, L2/16-087]
>>
>> B.14.3.1 Characters Proposed for Emoji=Provisional [Emoji SC/Edberg, L2/16-088]
>>
>> Discussion. UTC took no action at this time.
>
> "Took no action" generally means "rejected".

Can anyone explain then, why [L2/16-128] seems to have been “rejected” and still made it into selection.html?

Same minutes as above:

> E.1.11 Additional Emoji selection factor [Emoji SC/Edberg, L2/16-128]
>
> Discussion. UTC took no action at this time.

[L2/16-128]: http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16128-additional-emoji-selection-factor.pdf

This was the proposed text to be added:

> The following is a criterion for adding characters into a release of Unicode. It is not a selection factor that proposals need to address, but rather a consideration that the UTC takes into account before approving a character as a candidate for inclusion in a future release.
>
> Compared to most other characters in Unicode, there is greater public awareness of new emoji characters, and a high expectation of support for them from major vendors. However, the cost to such vendors of supporting new emoji characters is also much higher than for most other Unicode characters, especially on devices with limited memory.
>
> Thus in addition to these selection factors, before approving a new emoji character the Unicode Technical Committee needs to expect wide deployment: that major vendors would plan to include the proposed emoji character into very widely deployed fonts and input methods (keyboards / palettes / speech).

In the currently public version of “Submitting Emoji Character Proposals” (dated 4 August 2016) we find most of it unchanged.

http://www.unicode.org/emoji/selection.html#selection_factors

> Before approving as candidates or adding to a release of Unicode, other considerations are taken into account. See UTC Consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/emoji/selection.html#utc_consideration

> 1. Compared to most other characters in Unicode, there is greater public awareness of new emoji characters, and a high expectation of support for them from major vendors. However, the cost to such vendors of supporting new emoji characters is also much higher than for most other Unicode characters, especially on devices with limited memory.
>
> 2. Thus in addition to the selection factors, before approving a new emoji character the Unicode Technical Committee needs to expect wide deployment: that major vendors would plan to include the proposed emoji character into very widely deployed fonts and input methods (keyboards / palettes / speech).
>
> 3. The committee may balance the choices of emoji in a given set of candidates or release. For example, rather than 15 different breeds of dogs, the committee might choose to have some faces, some clothing, other animals, food items, transport items, and sports.

None of that was present in April 2016. <https://web.archive.org/web/20160427074931/http://www.unicode.org/emoji/selection.html>

I haven’t been able to find out what constitutes a “major vendor”. Apple, Microsoft and Google are certainly ones (and Unicode Full Members), but what about, for instance, Samsung, LG, Sony, Twitter/Twemoji, Facebook, Whatsapp or widely-used platform-independent ones like Emojione (mostly Associate Members or not Unicode members at all)?
Received on Sun Sep 11 2016 - 07:41:37 CDT