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> One weird inconsistency I’ve noticed is that hair color is done via ZWJ, while skin tone is just modifier emoji with no joiner. Why? Seriously, I am asking yo

> One weird inconsistency I’ve noticed is that hair color is done via ZWJ, while skin tone is just modifier emoji with no joiner. Why? Seriously, I am asking you: why? I have no clue. Mainly because skin tone modifiers [1] predate the ZWJ mechanism [2]. For hair colors there were two contending proposals [3] [4], one of which doesn't use ZWJ, and the ZWJ proposal was accepted because new modifiers (as opposed to ZWJ sequences) needed the architectural change [5]. [1] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14213-skin-tone-mod.pdf https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14213-skin-tone-mod.pdf [2] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15029r-zwj-emoji.pdf https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15029r-zwj-emoji.pdf [3] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17082-natural-hair-color.pdf https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17082-natural-hair-color.pd... [4] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17193-hair-colour-proposal.pdf https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17193-hair-colour-proposal.... [5] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17283-response-hair.pdf https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17283-response-hair.pdf

kevincox 6y ago
Randal Monroe was also wondering why most of the emoji aren't just modifiers: https://xkcd.com/1813/ https://xkcd.com/1813/
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  I wonder how many years it'll take for someone to train a neural network to generate emojis for all possible modifiers, regardless of whether they're currently real combinations.
  - blauditore 6y ago
    Intuitively, I think this would be doable today with style transfer networks. But maybe there wouldn't be enough training data with existing emojis. I hope someone who knows more about it can tune in...
  - theseanz 6y ago
    There's Emoji Mashup Bot+ - "Tries to create new emojis out of three random emoji parts" https://twitter.com/emojimashupplus https://twitter.com/emojimashupplus
    - vanderZwan 6y ago
      Nice! A more "old-school" procgen-like approach, but that makes it all the more elegant in how effective it is in its simplicity
  - pranau 6y ago
    The Google keyboard on Android (and, I think iOS) already lets you do this[1]. Go to the emoji picker on the keyboard and select an emoji or two. You get 4-5 suggestions of randomly added modifiers for the selected emoji. https://9to5google.com/2020/12/03/gboard-emoji-kitchen-expansion/ https://9to5google.com/2020/12/03/gboard-emoji-kitchen-expan...
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kevincox 6y ago

Randal Monroe was also wondering why most of the emoji aren't just modifiers: https://xkcd.com/1813/ https://xkcd.com/1813/

vanderZwan 6y ago
I wonder how many years it'll take for someone to train a neural network to generate emojis for all possible modifiers, regardless of whether they're currently real combinations.
- blauditore 6y ago
  Intuitively, I think this would be doable today with style transfer networks. But maybe there wouldn't be enough training data with existing emojis. I hope someone who knows more about it can tune in...
- theseanz 6y ago
  There's Emoji Mashup Bot+ - "Tries to create new emojis out of three random emoji parts" https://twitter.com/emojimashupplus https://twitter.com/emojimashupplus
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    Nice! A more "old-school" procgen-like approach, but that makes it all the more elegant in how effective it is in its simplicity
- pranau 6y ago
  The Google keyboard on Android (and, I think iOS) already lets you do this[1]. Go to the emoji picker on the keyboard and select an emoji or two. You get 4-5 suggestions of randomly added modifiers for the selected emoji. https://9to5google.com/2020/12/03/gboard-emoji-kitchen-expansion/ https://9to5google.com/2020/12/03/gboard-emoji-kitchen-expan...
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