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by derefr 686 days ago
The goal of Unicode is to ascribe semantic, machine-readable/indexible identifiers (codepoints) to “things that appear in what are conventionally considered plaintext documents” so that “text” can be handled in a standard way across systems like screen-readers, IMEs, LLMs, search engines, etc; and so that we don’t need to depend on some particular pictorial representation / decoding of an image surviving into the future to decode it[1], because the (open, widely replicated) Unicode standard and database files encode a description for each codepoint, and a semantics for each codepoint (things like collation, joining, capitalization, etc.)

[1] Consider if your vector image representing a soldering iron is someone’s IP, and they rescind licensing for use/redistribution of it. Poof goes all the (legal) copies of your emoji, leaving future historians scratching their heads about what was supposed to be there in the text, and what meaning it contributed. (A concrete case of this actually happening — though not with vector images, but rather stock sound effects: https://roblox.fandom.com/wiki/Roblox_death_sound)
1 comments
xdennis 686 days ago
What the GP is complaining about isn't Unicode in general but Unicode Emoticons[1]. Characters can represent any thought, but emojis represent only what the committee agrees to, and the committee seems quite political.

What they should have done is to just have two characters <START_EMOTICON> and <END_EMOTICON>. And you could have text like:

    I'm not doing it <START_EMOTICON>pouting<END_EMOTICON>
If the renderer supports the "pouting" emoji it would replace the text and if it doesn't it would just render:

    I'm not doing it *pouting*
Everyone would be free to create emojis. You could pick your own emoji provider. So if the emoji doesn't exist locally it would be fetched from `http://emojiprovider.tld/pouting`. If you don't like it you can install another one.

It's ridiculous that there's no "pouting" emoji but there 6 emojis for pregnant men.

[1]: Yes, they're called emoticons in Unicode, not emojis. The term emoji entered English later.

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