3 ms·

They can mean different things based on what set of renderings you're using for the same emoji... good writeup here https://eev.ee/blog/2016/04/12/apple-did-not

• thaumasiotes 10y ago
  That essay has a good grasp of why we want unicode, but completely missed the point of why we want emoticons. If I send an image to someone, I don't want it to be rendered in an unpredictable way based on their unknown system and font choices. I need to know that they see what I intended to send. Everyone would be happier if they were embedded images; that's what we all want. They're shoehorned into unicode instead because that makes it technically easier to send them in text messages, not because they're textual objects.
  • colejohnson66 10y ago
    Technically, you don't know your text will render the same on someone else's device. For all you know, they could have their system font set to Wingdings.
    • thaumasiotes 10y ago
      I don't care about that (see my comment, "They're shoehorned into unicode instead because that makes it technically easier to send them in text messages, not because they're textual objects"). Text is grouped into several equivalence classes. I only need them to recognize any L that I send as an L. If I send a facial expression, I need to know what I'm sending. Those do not have defined equivalence classes.