4 ms·

I'm not saying Apple's implementation should be the gold standard, just that characters that the Unicode specification allows to combine into one character, sho

I'm not saying Apple's implementation should be the gold standard, just that characters that the Unicode specification allows to combine into one character, should be counted as one character. I understand that technical limitations will sometimes cause a combined character to be displayed as more than one character, as it happens in Safari with that ninja cat, and in those cases, it's preferable to decompose the emoji, or use a tofu character, than changing it for another.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
They are decomposing the emoji, are they not? The resulting glyph (with three family members rather than four) is just the result of the ligatures between the remaining emojis.
- tobr 4y ago
  From a user perspective, a family emoji is one character. Whether it’s implemented as a ligature seems irrelevant, as that’s not visible to the user.
  - junon 4y ago
    Emoji was such a mistake in my opinion. It's cluttered the Unicode spec for a long time now and it's a continual source of problems.
    - tobr 4y ago
      An incredibly popular and successful mistake, in that case. Is the purpose of Unicode to be an uncluttered spec, or to be a useful way to represent text?
      - wwalexander 4y ago
        Emojis aren’t text, though. Nobody “writes” emoji outside of the digital world so I don’t think emoji could accurately be called “text” or part of a “writing system: > Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,[note 1][note 2] is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems People write smiley faces, but there was already a code point for basic smileys. I think standardized emoticons are a good thing, but I don’t think the Unicode spec is where they best belong.
        tobr 4y ago
        I don’t see anything in the quoted passage that limits it to non-digital writing systems.
        Nevermark 4y ago
        Given that emoji are most typically used in text, having it all together seems better than two bodies coming up with incompatible solutions to emoji and the glyph issues of various languages. In the end emoji is a language, a visual icon language.
        WorldMaker 4y ago
        Where would they belong if not Unicode? Emoticons are a "writing system" (whether or not you believe them to be more "text" or "meta-text") that needs encoding, and one that was encoded in standards that predated Unicode. (They were at first added for compatibility with CJK systems that had already been using them for some time. They've been greatly expanded since those original encodings that Unicode "inherited" from other text encodings, but they started as text encodings in other standards.) Personally, I think Unicode actually did the world a favor by taking ownership of emoji and standardizing them. There's nothing "weird" that emoji do that doesn't exist somewhere else in some other language's text encodings. Things like ZWJ sequences for complex graphemes existed in a number of languages that Unicode encoded well before emoji. Emoji being common and popular helps break certain Western-centric assumptions that language encodings are "simple" and 1-to-1 code point to grapheme, assumptions that had been needed to break for many years before emoji gave Unicode users a tool to test that even "Western developers" needed to respect if they wanted happy users. Better emoji support is better Unicode support across the lovely and incredible diversity of what Unicode encodes.
        WorldMaker 4y ago
        Aside: Also, given the current, common vernacular usages of the eggplant and peach emoji alone, I find it difficult in 2023 to argue that emoji aren't text and aren't being used as a language inside text for and of text.
        wwalexander 4y ago
    - gpderetta 4y ago
      Emojis simply manifest existing bugs in programs. Those bugs would have existed anyway as emojis are not the only symbols beyond the BMP nor the only symbols composed of grapheme clusters. Being much more frequent than other more exotic characters they just reveal bugs more often.
  - rkeene2 4y ago
    How many characters are in "offer" ? 4 (because of the ligature for "ff") or 5 ?
    - tobr 4y ago
      5. As I said, whether it’s implemented as a ligature is irrelevant, as that’s not visible to the user.
  - 10240 4y ago
    It's ambiguous. At least on my system (X11), I can move the cursor through a 4-member family with one press of Left or Right, and can't put the cursor inside it, and I can delete it with one press of Delete. But it takes 5 presses of Backspace to delete it.

jakelazaroff 4y ago

They are decomposing the emoji, are they not? The resulting glyph (with three family members rather than four) is just the result of the ligatures between the remaining emojis.

tobr 4y ago
From a user perspective, a family emoji is one character. Whether it’s implemented as a ligature seems irrelevant, as that’s not visible to the user.
- junon 4y ago
  Emoji was such a mistake in my opinion. It's cluttered the Unicode spec for a long time now and it's a continual source of problems.
  - tobr 4y ago
    An incredibly popular and successful mistake, in that case. Is the purpose of Unicode to be an uncluttered spec, or to be a useful way to represent text?
    - wwalexander 4y ago
      Emojis aren’t text, though. Nobody “writes” emoji outside of the digital world so I don’t think emoji could accurately be called “text” or part of a “writing system: > Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,[note 1][note 2] is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems People write smiley faces, but there was already a code point for basic smileys. I think standardized emoticons are a good thing, but I don’t think the Unicode spec is where they best belong.
      - tobr 4y ago
        I don’t see anything in the quoted passage that limits it to non-digital writing systems.
      - Nevermark 4y ago
        Given that emoji are most typically used in text, having it all together seems better than two bodies coming up with incompatible solutions to emoji and the glyph issues of various languages. In the end emoji is a language, a visual icon language.
      - WorldMaker 4y ago
        Where would they belong if not Unicode? Emoticons are a "writing system" (whether or not you believe them to be more "text" or "meta-text") that needs encoding, and one that was encoded in standards that predated Unicode. (They were at first added for compatibility with CJK systems that had already been using them for some time. They've been greatly expanded since those original encodings that Unicode "inherited" from other text encodings, but they started as text encodings in other standards.) Personally, I think Unicode actually did the world a favor by taking ownership of emoji and standardizing them. There's nothing "weird" that emoji do that doesn't exist somewhere else in some other language's text encodings. Things like ZWJ sequences for complex graphemes existed in a number of languages that Unicode encoded well before emoji. Emoji being common and popular helps break certain Western-centric assumptions that language encodings are "simple" and 1-to-1 code point to grapheme, assumptions that had been needed to break for many years before emoji gave Unicode users a tool to test that even "Western developers" needed to respect if they wanted happy users. Better emoji support is better Unicode support across the lovely and incredible diversity of what Unicode encodes.
        WorldMaker 4y ago
        Aside: Also, given the current, common vernacular usages of the eggplant and peach emoji alone, I find it difficult in 2023 to argue that emoji aren't text and aren't being used as a language inside text for and of text.
        wwalexander 4y ago
  - gpderetta 4y ago
    Emojis simply manifest existing bugs in programs. Those bugs would have existed anyway as emojis are not the only symbols beyond the BMP nor the only symbols composed of grapheme clusters. Being much more frequent than other more exotic characters they just reveal bugs more often.
- rkeene2 4y ago
  How many characters are in "offer" ? 4 (because of the ligature for "ff") or 5 ?
  - tobr 4y ago
    5. As I said, whether it’s implemented as a ligature is irrelevant, as that’s not visible to the user.
- 10240 4y ago
  It's ambiguous. At least on my system (X11), I can move the cursor through a 4-member family with one press of Left or Right, and can't put the cursor inside it, and I can delete it with one press of Delete. But it takes 5 presses of Backspace to delete it.