5 ms·
Imho, unicode should stay out of politics. Country flags, vaccine syringes and pregnant men should have nothing to do with how computers handle text and writing
by Longhanks 3y ago
Imho, unicode should stay out of politics. Country flags, vaccine syringes and pregnant men should have nothing to do with how computers handle text and writing systems.
- qalmakka 3y agoIf it were that easy - sadly everything that's in any way related to the way we communicate and we relate to the world. Just look at the kerfuffle about skin tones... Everything is political if you are looking for a reason to fight. Language is a very sensitive topic - in Central Asian countries, using Latin, Cyrillic or Perso-Arabic script for instance has very strong political connotations, same in the Balkans. The world is just like that
- veave 3y agoOr when big tech banded together to change the pistol emoji to some scifi zapper.
- spookthesunset 3y agoFrom what I recall the problem was on some devices it was rendered as a “sci-fi zapper” or squirtgun and on others it was a fairly realistic depiction of a gun. Leading to some misunderstandings…
- throwawaymobule 3y agoI think that was a case of apple leading and everyone else following. They went with a water pistol in their font.
- makeworld 3y agoThere is no way to avoid it. It is very obvious that deciding whether "vaccine syringes" are political (and therefore excluded) or not is itself a political decision.
- naniwaduni 3y agoThere's a certain kind of extremist who claims that their contentious positions aren't political, but the fact that there's an argument, and that you can point to mainstream coverage of it, strongly suggests that they're full of shit and everyone can see it.
- kergonath 3y agoWhat a strange position. The fact that an argument exists just shows that some people want to argue. Anyone can start an argument about anything. It’s hardly a good base to make a decision.
- mseepgood 3y agoHow do you recognize whether a syringe emoji is a vaccine syringe or a regular syringe?
- kergonath 3y agoWhat does a syringe has to do with this, exactly? Besides, why do you care what funny symbols people use in discussions that don’t involve you?
- chungy 3y agoThe good news is that Unicode has stayed out of politics. Such things you're complaining about are graphemes comprised of multiple combined code points, and it's up to an environment to support them or not (Android and iOS infamously do this in China: text won't render the same within and without China.)