3 ms·

Yet I would say the majority of the unicode posts linked on HN are not about non latin scripts but about silly emoji / flags etc

by temac 5y ago

JustFinishedBSG 5y ago
Because it's easier to visualize / talk about than some weird (to us) Hangul script but the problem is exactly the same: english isn't the only language on earth.
- temac 5y ago
  I would prefer to see issues on real text if they even exist. I don't care about some missing combining support for emojis esp for probably a quickly moving target.
rkangel 5y ago
Yes, I don't understand why non 'text' characters such as flags and emoji were allowed in Unicode. They appear to me to be a fundamentally different concept. That said, I have always assumed that these problems we get with emoji also have equivalents that show up in other languages, it's just that we speak English and so only see them with Emoji. Maybe it's good that Emoji were included because it actually stresses our Unicode implementations! And this is all before you introduce text that is written right-to-left like arabic scripts.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  > Yes, I don't understand why non 'text' characters such as flags and emoji were allowed in Unicode. Just my 2 cents, but if ASCII includes, among other things, "characters" for linefeed, 4 unspecified "device control characters", EOT (End of Transmission), and a character to ring a bell, then I guess its okay to put some smileys and flags into Unicode.
- numpad0 5y ago
  I believe it was solely about disrupting Japanese flip phone web which was an appendix to the web that was starting to swell up really badly.
- sharikous 5y ago
  RTL is a nightmare for those of us who work with it. The problem is not to work with RTL. I enjoy that. The problem is the massive quantity of LTR stuff that is in RTL languages still (English words, programming language keywords, math, music, certain conventions, ...) Anyway yes multi-character glyphs occur in various forms (like accents, sometimes: é, ñ...) but I always thought that the burden of supporting them was on the fonts, not on the Terminal or the Unicode standard itself.

Yet I would say the majority of the unicode posts linked on HN are not about non latin scripts but about silly emoji / flags etc

by temac 5y ago

Yet I would say the majority of the unicode posts linked on HN are not about non latin scripts but about silly emoji / flags etc

JustFinishedBSG 5y ago

Because it's easier to visualize / talk about than some weird (to us) Hangul script but the problem is exactly the same: english isn't the only language on earth.

temac 5y ago
I would prefer to see issues on real text if they even exist. I don't care about some missing combining support for emojis esp for probably a quickly moving target.

rkangel 5y ago

Yes, I don't understand why non 'text' characters such as flags and emoji were allowed in Unicode. They appear to me to be a fundamentally different concept. That said, I have always assumed that these problems we get with emoji also have equivalents that show up in other languages, it's just that we speak English and so only see them with Emoji. Maybe it's good that Emoji were included because it actually stresses our Unicode implementations! And this is all before you introduce text that is written right-to-left like arabic scripts.

usrbinbash 5y ago
> Yes, I don't understand why non 'text' characters such as flags and emoji were allowed in Unicode. Just my 2 cents, but if ASCII includes, among other things, "characters" for linefeed, 4 unspecified "device control characters", EOT (End of Transmission), and a character to ring a bell, then I guess its okay to put some smileys and flags into Unicode.
numpad0 5y ago
I believe it was solely about disrupting Japanese flip phone web which was an appendix to the web that was starting to swell up really badly.
sharikous 5y ago
RTL is a nightmare for those of us who work with it. The problem is not to work with RTL. I enjoy that. The problem is the massive quantity of LTR stuff that is in RTL languages still (English words, programming language keywords, math, music, certain conventions, ...) Anyway yes multi-character glyphs occur in various forms (like accents, sometimes: é, ñ...) but I always thought that the burden of supporting them was on the fonts, not on the Terminal or the Unicode standard itself.