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The difference is that Han and Kanji are 4000+ years old. When smiley faces reach han/kanji's level of consistency if humans 20 generations from now speak in fu
by vortico 8y ago
The difference is that Han and Kanji are 4000+ years old. When smiley faces reach han/kanji's level of consistency if humans 20 generations from now speak in full smiley face syntax, then it's time for Unicode to standardize them.
Anyone from standards committees know that when you attempt to standardize something early that is in development and still mutating, you either 1) prevent further change of the development if your standard is widespread enough, leaving you with an early, not-well-thought-out version that the world has to live with or 2) your standard must keep up with the changing reality, making your standard change over time, which is synonymous with "a bad standard" or "not even a standard".
Unicode has a perfect solution already for glyphs that are currently in development: unspecified reserved blocks. If a tribe of humans wants to develop a language around smiley faces, they can use one of these blocks until Unicode Inc. recognizes that it is consistent enough to standardize. But instead, Unicode has placed emoji in the mainline standard.
There's only one explanation for Unicode's horrible decision. Ideagraphs are controversial, and controversy creates votes and attention, which funds their company. If you think this is the way it should work, emojis are for you.
- cryptonector 8y agoAs writing systems they are old indeed. Not every character in those systems is that old, or very old at all. So what? In a digital world, not having a Unicode codepoint assignment means not having the character at all, not even with pen and paper. Therefore rejecting emoji is the same as rejecting new scripts altogether. I don't think that's wise. EDIT: Also, regarding private use codepoints, since the desire is to interoperate, those cannot be used for emoji.
- vortico 8y agoPrivate reserved blocks are perfect for emoji and developling languages. They can be a time-variable recommendation, not a standard, by Unicode. That's how anything gets standardized. You don't just put new arbitrary ideas into the mainline standard. This is like Boost and the C++ standard, or PEP drafts and the Python standard, or W3 WD and REC, or industry de-facto standards and ISO. If emoji becomes constant enough (not likely since no language will even be developed using it), it should then be moved into Unicode Standard. But accepting emoji to the official standard on the spot? I see they've chosen my (1) from above.
- cryptonector 8y agoPUC are completely non-interoperable. Apple and Google, and their users, want to interop. PUC is a non-starter.
- vortico 8y agoSo why don't Apple and Google agree on a standard? Why does Unicode need to do it?
- cryptonector 8y agoBecause PUC means private to an organization. Any standard imposed on PUC would... violate the Unicode standard, and any standard of how to use PUC would, if accepted by the industry, be indistinguishable from... just the Unicode Consortium standardizing those characters. Why is the UC doing this not good for you but some other standards development organization (formal or informal) OK?
- vortico 8y agoIn this case, the rules of Unicode has set itself up to be doomed. If the organization favors commercial votes over common sense, it is no longer an organization with the purpose of standardizing human glyphs, but a company that accepts icons from companies for cash. However, going back to my original point, UC's decision to standardize smileys from Japanese icons was a mistake, and it can be reversed by releasing that part of the standard into a non-UC-endorsed extension, or by deprecating it entirely, recommending system-dependent methods for transmitting icons instead.
- cryptonector 8y agoNot commercial votes, paying members's votes. I prefer SDOs like the IETF, which are not pay-to-play, but, really, a seat at the UC is a drop in the bucket for nation states.