4 ms·

I would rather use words to describe whether something is a contemptible pile of guano, and these cutsie images are reducing our ability to eloquently and accur

I would rather use words to describe whether something is a contemptible pile of guano, and these cutsie images are reducing our ability to eloquently and accurately communicate. A well placed, terse word can have far more impact and meaning than the 4yr old speak that emoji bring us to. Your username is a perfect example: it's hilarious.

derefr 7y ago
Unicode is a lot like a dictionary, in that both things exist to allow people to work with documents that already exist, whether the tool likes it or not. Dictionaries let you understand existing texts, by defining the words in them. Unicode preserves and faithfully transmits existing texts, by defining and fixing the meanings of the codels of those texts. Even if a dictionary didn't define a particular word, people would still use that word. You just wouldn't be able to find out what that word means from your dictionary. The word wouldn't be harmed; only the dictionary would be made less useful. Likewise, even without an assigned codepoint for an emoji, people would still create encodings of it—in chat programs and the like. They'd just be proprietary encodings that wouldn't be able to be copied-and-pasted to other software, and would likely suffer bit-rot. (Can any program that exists today—and that runs on a modern computer—correctly parse out the emoji-like symbols from the binary transcript files of a 90s IM program like AIM or ICQ?) The emoji symbols—at least at the time—wouldn't be harmed by this (people would still use them just as often); only Unicode's goal of "one universal text encoding" would be harmed.
- ekimekim 7y ago
  Compare also AUBERGINE and PEACH, which have both picked up alternate meanings to fill in for certain popular anatomical values that Unicode has elected not to define. EDIT: seems HN removes emoji. I understand why, but it makes discussions like this one somewhat annoying. EDIT: I've removed a somewhat vulgar reference to what those alternate meanings are, as it seems to have upset some people. I was trying to make a real point about how users will fill in the gaps when demand exists, even if Unicode omits them.

derefr 7y ago

Unicode is a lot like a dictionary, in that both things exist to allow people to work with documents that already exist, whether the tool likes it or not. Dictionaries let you understand existing texts, by defining the words in them. Unicode preserves and faithfully transmits existing texts, by defining and fixing the meanings of the codels of those texts. Even if a dictionary didn't define a particular word, people would still use that word. You just wouldn't be able to find out what that word means from your dictionary. The word wouldn't be harmed; only the dictionary would be made less useful. Likewise, even without an assigned codepoint for an emoji, people would still create encodings of it—in chat programs and the like. They'd just be proprietary encodings that wouldn't be able to be copied-and-pasted to other software, and would likely suffer bit-rot. (Can any program that exists today—and that runs on a modern computer—correctly parse out the emoji-like symbols from the binary transcript files of a 90s IM program like AIM or ICQ?) The emoji symbols—at least at the time—wouldn't be harmed by this (people would still use them just as often); only Unicode's goal of "one universal text encoding" would be harmed.

ekimekim 7y ago
Compare also AUBERGINE and PEACH, which have both picked up alternate meanings to fill in for certain popular anatomical values that Unicode has elected not to define. EDIT: seems HN removes emoji. I understand why, but it makes discussions like this one somewhat annoying. EDIT: I've removed a somewhat vulgar reference to what those alternate meanings are, as it seems to have upset some people. I was trying to make a real point about how users will fill in the gaps when demand exists, even if Unicode omits them.