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Microsoft have taken an unconventional position here by refusing to render the actual flags at all. Instead, you just get the country code. The Afghanistan Flag

by ljm 5y ago

Microsoft have taken an unconventional position here by refusing to render the actual flags at all. Instead, you just get the country code. The Afghanistan Flag emoji in Windows 10/11 is literally just an icon that says 'AF'; same for all of the others.

zinekeller 5y ago
There's already a precedent in Microsoft to be non-confrontational when depicting geographical features, one of these is the map on the Time Zone setting (now removed): https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42... A very good quote at the end: “Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.”
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
After reading the article, I feel like this was the right approach, and the Unicode consortium should never have added flags in the first place. > If the Afghanistan Flag emoji does change to represent a Taliban-controlled nation, the meaning of prior text that includes this emoji will change.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  The Unicode consortium never added flags, like ever. Regional indicators are intended to be "This is an ISO-assigned region", looking like 🄰🄵 than a flag or something, however they acknowledge that implementations would add flags anyway.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    I mean, Unicode's emoji reference list does call them "flags": https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#country-flag https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#countr...
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      ... yes, but it was just tossed on because a) backwards compatibility to East Asian scripts (they do have three flags, plus the personal flag of Kim Il-Sung that was rejected (including the larger-font "Kim Il-Sung" and "Kim Jong-Il"), of course), plus PUA use of, for example, the US and German flags. I think this that not adding it would be problematic geopolitically and technically, but at the same time only adding East Asian flags sounds like favouritism, so the steering committee is in a lose-lose situation.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Maybe the problem is I don't know the full history here—but it seems to me that whenever the Unicode consortium first added a script (east asian?) that included flags with specific designs, those flags should have been excluded. It would have meant some small compatibility breakage, but at least the breakage would have been contained. Note, I say this with the benefit of hindsight that I would not have had in 200X. (Although, I also say it as a layperson; I'd expect the steering committee to think about these things more than me.)
        colejohnson66 5y ago
        The Unicode Consortium’s goal is to have codepoints for everything. They want a situation where a string in one encoding (Shift-JIS or whatever) can be converted into Unicode codepoints and back with no (visible[a]) loss. This leads to them never removing codepoints, and even adding some that don’t make sense at first glance, such as U+1F574 MAN IN BUSINESS SUIT LEVITATING.[0] That one was added because of Microsoft’s Wingdings font, and the internet has a field day with complaints about that being added and not a new emoji for $whatever. [a]: grapheme clusters(?) [0]: https://codepoints.net/U+1F574 https://codepoints.net/U+1F574
        Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Sure, and that's a great goal, and they can get 99.9% of the way there—but that last 0.1% may require bad compromises that aren't worth it. You brought up the Kim Il-Sung flag was rejected, that seems like a good decision, even if it means they can't entirely fulfill their goal!

by ljm 5y ago

zinekeller 5y ago

There's already a precedent in Microsoft to be non-confrontational when depicting geographical features, one of these is the map on the Time Zone setting (now removed): https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42... A very good quote at the end: “Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.”

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

After reading the article, I feel like this was the right approach, and the Unicode consortium should never have added flags in the first place. > If the Afghanistan Flag emoji does change to represent a Taliban-controlled nation, the meaning of prior text that includes this emoji will change.

zinekeller 5y ago
The Unicode consortium never added flags, like ever. Regional indicators are intended to be "This is an ISO-assigned region", looking like 🄰🄵 than a flag or something, however they acknowledge that implementations would add flags anyway.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I mean, Unicode's emoji reference list does call them "flags": https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#country-flag https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#countr...
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    ... yes, but it was just tossed on because a) backwards compatibility to East Asian scripts (they do have three flags, plus the personal flag of Kim Il-Sung that was rejected (including the larger-font "Kim Il-Sung" and "Kim Jong-Il"), of course), plus PUA use of, for example, the US and German flags. I think this that not adding it would be problematic geopolitically and technically, but at the same time only adding East Asian flags sounds like favouritism, so the steering committee is in a lose-lose situation.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Maybe the problem is I don't know the full history here—but it seems to me that whenever the Unicode consortium first added a script (east asian?) that included flags with specific designs, those flags should have been excluded. It would have meant some small compatibility breakage, but at least the breakage would have been contained. Note, I say this with the benefit of hindsight that I would not have had in 200X. (Although, I also say it as a layperson; I'd expect the steering committee to think about these things more than me.)
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        The Unicode Consortium’s goal is to have codepoints for everything. They want a situation where a string in one encoding (Shift-JIS or whatever) can be converted into Unicode codepoints and back with no (visible[a]) loss. This leads to them never removing codepoints, and even adding some that don’t make sense at first glance, such as U+1F574 MAN IN BUSINESS SUIT LEVITATING.[0] That one was added because of Microsoft’s Wingdings font, and the internet has a field day with complaints about that being added and not a new emoji for $whatever. [a]: grapheme clusters(?) [0]: https://codepoints.net/U+1F574 https://codepoints.net/U+1F574
        Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Sure, and that's a great goal, and they can get 99.9% of the way there—but that last 0.1% may require bad compromises that aren't worth it. You brought up the Kim Il-Sung flag was rejected, that seems like a good decision, even if it means they can't entirely fulfill their goal!