3 ms·

A better example might be country flags. When the political situation changes or the flag is redesigned, how should Unicode and the various fonts handle this? P

A better example might be country flags. When the political situation changes or the flag is redesigned, how should Unicode and the various fonts handle this? Presumably text written in the past shouldn't change for viewers in the future. Unicode mixes abstract concepts and concrete representations together on a number of levels. It seems like a legitimately difficult problem to me though. An 'a' character might be written differently but remains fundamentally the same thing since ancient times. Meanwhile the spelling and meaning of words shifts over time. So how are you supposed to handle pictograms that can change simultaneously in both commonly accepted representation and fundamental meaning? It's also ... weird ... that a TTY bell has a dedicated not-glyph in a writing system, isn't it? Colors are (appropriately, imo) handled via escape codes. I certainly don't want support for HTML flashing text to be added to Unicode! I do appreciate the historical context that led to the current situation though.

fomine3 5y ago
Unicode treats country flags very well because it's controversial topic. They don't define what flags is available, but ISO country code, font vendor, and OS vendor (or emoji picker vendor) defines. As a fallback, we can see country code instead of flag.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  I'm aware, and don't think I'd agree that flags (or emoji more generally) were handled well at all. I generally think that such things should be handled via an escape code that invokes some other (higher level) standard, the same as colored or bold font in the terminal. It would arguably make much more sense to encode flags (and emoji-like things in general) as some sort of compressed SVG representation. At least then (among other things) I wouldn't have to wonder how things would look to message recipients or someone reading old messages in the future.

fomine3 5y ago

Unicode treats country flags very well because it's controversial topic. They don't define what flags is available, but ISO country code, font vendor, and OS vendor (or emoji picker vendor) defines. As a fallback, we can see country code instead of flag.

d110af5ccf 5y ago
I'm aware, and don't think I'd agree that flags (or emoji more generally) were handled well at all. I generally think that such things should be handled via an escape code that invokes some other (higher level) standard, the same as colored or bold font in the terminal. It would arguably make much more sense to encode flags (and emoji-like things in general) as some sort of compressed SVG representation. At least then (among other things) I wouldn't have to wonder how things would look to message recipients or someone reading old messages in the future.