The entire notion that emoticons should be limited to what a committee approves (which is then mangled by corporate PR even further) is ridiculous. Just retvrn to images.
This. But more work is needed. I tried a bunch of Discord alternatives like Matrix but very few have a fun experience with things custom emoji images that really make a chat server feel like a home.
Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?
To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.
Generally Unicode is for encoding all existing encodings/writing.
So you generally can’t add something because it would be cool or fun or useful, but only because it is currently in use and cannot be encoded by Unicode.
That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on.
Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.
They were grandfathered in, not voted on. Or rather there was a vote that resulted in adopting the character sets developed by Japanese telecoms en masse.
Weirdly this is in line with Unicode in general. Widespread (and not even widespread) historic use in say print results in characters getting included.
> if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?
Needing to load three fonts to show a single document that mixes vastly different character sets is still infinitely better than not being able to have those different characters in the same .txt or .md file at all
> how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?
Unicode can encode about 1100k code points, and about 800k of those are currently unassigned and available for future scripts or characters
> how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered
They get added in the next Unicode revision.
In Unicode you have "blocks" [0] that are often bigger than the number of characters in a script, language or function. There are usually also space for new blocks between unrelated blocks.
For example, in the case of cuneiform, it was introduced in Unicode 5.0, and there have been revisions in 7.0 and 8.0 [1]
As an example of having not-exactly-a-character as Unicode "characters", it is rather rare that musical symbols are embedded in running texts (which is a primary litmus test for encoding), but musical symbols are typically rendered with existing font technology so there are needs for standardized "character" codes, as SMuFL [1] does. In fact Unicode 18 will get tons of musical symbols that have been in SMuFL for a long time but not yet in Unicode [2].
There is also GNU unifont [1] "The original intent of Unifont was to offer a simple font format with wide Unicode coverage to render something meaningful for each Unicode code point"
I would be more interested if they are ever going to cancel HAN unification. Looking at their "Factors for Exclusion" list it could be summarized by "we made some mistakes in past but are sticking to it" :D
IVD works, theoretically and practically (recent versions of OpenType have an explicit support for them). It's not their fault that Japanese vendors have been not very quick to adopt them.
If a Japanese and Taiwanese person type things with their keyboards and end up with the same bytes for different logical characters then no things do not work practically for any practical definition of "practically".
Your argument is absurd because people don't see code---they see glyphs, and using the same code for slightly different glyphs is a non-issue when they are not interchanged. (And when they are interchanged, both would see glyphs "correct" to them anyway.) Japaneses are sensitive to Han unification only because they recognize more glyph variations (Z-variants) than what Unicode originally could, and IVS is exactly a tool for ensuring exact glyphs assuming cooperative vendors. Not to mention that Han unification was already quite weakened by source separation principles in the first place.
I need a table emoji because then I could combine it with a horse emoji. This would be "Pferd Tisch" (Horse Table) in German which sounds similar to "Fertig" which translates to "done". Yes I want it only for that dumb joke.
If the seahorse emoji is introduced, we will have to train new foundation models. The costs connected to the introduction of the seahorse emoji will be in the billions.
You're absolutely right—the seahorse emoji was added in Unicode version 19.0.0 after OpenAI purchased the Unicode Consortium and converted it to a for-profit corporation.
I'm okay with smileys, but Unicode wasn't the right standard to deal with it. Unicode maybe wasn't the right standard to deal with anything.
At least nothing is wiggling. Of those Unicode points which are graphical, at least all of them can still be printed on paper and won't require a screen. I wonder how long that invariant lasts.
Personally I think the whole emoji thing is a triumph of Unicode. Being able to convey more subtext through emoji makes communication so much easier especially across language boundaries.
The Toki Pona script (aka sitelen pona) needs some codepoints for its ideograms. While Toki Pona is not in Unicode, tokiponists have mostly agreed to use the U+F19xx range in the Private Use Area-A. Most fonts rendering sitelen pona uses that. But using PUA is problematic (no character properties, a lot of restrictions on the web, and constant clashes with other fonts [such as the "nerdfonts" for example]).
The internet needs a "tin foil hat" emoji, but two proposals have been rejected :(
Emoji proposals and status: https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status.html
The entire notion that emoticons should be limited to what a committee approves (which is then mangled by corporate PR even further) is ridiculous. Just retvrn to images.
This. But more work is needed. I tried a bunch of Discord alternatives like Matrix but very few have a fun experience with things custom emoji images that really make a chat server feel like a home.
Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?
Vendors-have-no-capacity-to-handle-more-than-handful-number-of-emojis-per-each-release thing.
To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.
Generally Unicode is for encoding all existing encodings/writing.
So you generally can’t add something because it would be cool or fun or useful, but only because it is currently in use and cannot be encoded by Unicode.
If this were entirely true, we'd never see new emoji added, and yet we do.
That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on.
Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.
Eh, it's not like there are hundreds of emojises pretty much exclusively tied to Japanese culture.
They were grandfathered in, not voted on. Or rather there was a vote that resulted in adopting the character sets developed by Japanese telecoms en masse.
Weirdly this is in line with Unicode in general. Widespread (and not even widespread) historic use in say print results in characters getting included.
> emojises
I don’t protest the coinage here (goodness knows my native language did worse things to English words), but I can’t stop saying it in Gollum’s voice.
Seems like a conspiracy. Also it's so silly that pistol turned into water pistol.
looking at the changes it makes me wonder:
- is there an usable font the cover all unicode ?
- if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?
- how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?
- how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered ?
> if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?
Needing to load three fonts to show a single document that mixes vastly different character sets is still infinitely better than not being able to have those different characters in the same .txt or .md file at all
> how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?
Unicode can encode about 1100k code points, and about 800k of those are currently unassigned and available for future scripts or characters
> how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered
They get added in the next Unicode revision.
In Unicode you have "blocks" [0] that are often bigger than the number of characters in a script, language or function. There are usually also space for new blocks between unrelated blocks.
For example, in the case of cuneiform, it was introduced in Unicode 5.0, and there have been revisions in 7.0 and 8.0 [1]
--
As an example of having not-exactly-a-character as Unicode "characters", it is rather rare that musical symbols are embedded in running texts (which is a primary litmus test for encoding), but musical symbols are typically rendered with existing font technology so there are needs for standardized "character" codes, as SMuFL [1] does. In fact Unicode 18 will get tons of musical symbols that have been in SMuFL for a long time but not yet in Unicode [2].
[1] https://www.smufl.org/
[2] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2025/25017-miscellaneous-musical...
The Noto fonts have great coverage: https://notofonts.github.io/overview/
Pretty cool vizualisation.
There is also GNU unifont [1] "The original intent of Unifont was to offer a simple font format with wide Unicode coverage to render something meaningful for each Unicode code point"
[1] https://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html
What everyone actually cares about — new emojis!
* Cracking face
* Left/Right thumb sign
* Monarch butterfly
* Pickle
* Lighthouse
* Meteor
* Eraser
* Net with handle
Other great additions:
- Left and Right parenthesis with middle ring [1]
- A wiggly exclamation mark expressing mirth or laughter [1] (edit: and something I completely missed: the inverted version can express sarcasm)
- Cuneiform numerals, including lots of arranged dots that might be useful in other contexts [2]
- New variations of "measured angle" and "sector" [3]
- A transparent cube and a white cube [4]
Also a couple new combining marks
And for anyone who wants to see what the reference images for the new emojis look like:
Lighthouse: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1F680.p...
Other new Emojis: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1FA70.p...
1: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-2E00.pd...
2: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-12550.p...
3: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1CEC0.p...
4: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1F780.p...
Sadly it looks like it will be a dead monarch butterfly
https://www.emilydamstra.com/please-enough-dead-butterflies/
I would be more interested if they are ever going to cancel HAN unification. Looking at their "Factors for Exclusion" list it could be summarized by "we made some mistakes in past but are sticking to it" :D
Han Unification was effectively "fixed" by Ideographic Variation Sequences, so no.
You mean theoretically. Effectively, nothing is fixed yet.
IVD works, theoretically and practically (recent versions of OpenType have an explicit support for them). It's not their fault that Japanese vendors have been not very quick to adopt them.
If a Japanese and Taiwanese person type things with their keyboards and end up with the same bytes for different logical characters then no things do not work practically for any practical definition of "practically".
Your argument is absurd because people don't see code---they see glyphs, and using the same code for slightly different glyphs is a non-issue when they are not interchanged. (And when they are interchanged, both would see glyphs "correct" to them anyway.) Japaneses are sensitive to Han unification only because they recognize more glyph variations (Z-variants) than what Unicode originally could, and IVS is exactly a tool for ensuring exact glyphs assuming cooperative vendors. Not to mention that Han unification was already quite weakened by source separation principles in the first place.
I need a table emoji because then I could combine it with a horse emoji. This would be "Pferd Tisch" (Horse Table) in German which sounds similar to "Fertig" which translates to "done". Yes I want it only for that dumb joke.
Still no seahorse
If the seahorse emoji is introduced, we will have to train new foundation models. The costs connected to the introduction of the seahorse emoji will be in the billions.
You're absolutely right—the seahorse emoji was added in Unicode version 19.0.0 after OpenAI purchased the Unicode Consortium and converted it to a for-profit corporation.
The seahorse being, of course, among the first commercial Unicode characters that require a subscription to use.
Does anyone know why a monarch butterfly was added, when there is already a butterfly emoji?
Hey ChatGPT show me a seahorse emoji.
Personally the whole emoji thing is an unmitigated disaster. I'm okay with smileys and gestures but everything else is pointless
I'm okay with smileys, but Unicode wasn't the right standard to deal with it. Unicode maybe wasn't the right standard to deal with anything.
At least nothing is wiggling. Of those Unicode points which are graphical, at least all of them can still be printed on paper and won't require a screen. I wonder how long that invariant lasts.
I enjoy putting emojis in folder names on my computer for easier visual identification.
Also, in passwords on websites to keep developers on their toes.
It's classic scope creep resulting in unmanageable bloat.
Personally I think the whole emoji thing is a triumph of Unicode. Being able to convey more subtext through emoji makes communication so much easier especially across language boundaries.
No toki pona?
For now, follow UCSUR: https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Under-ConScript_Unicode_Registry
Does it need any additional code points?
The Toki Pona script (aka sitelen pona) needs some codepoints for its ideograms. While Toki Pona is not in Unicode, tokiponists have mostly agreed to use the U+F19xx range in the Private Use Area-A. Most fonts rendering sitelen pona uses that. But using PUA is problematic (no character properties, a lot of restrictions on the web, and constant clashes with other fonts [such as the "nerdfonts" for example]).