We've had \.|.. since as far as I can remember.
Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
61–70 of 89 posts
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#62This serves as a reminder that the Unicode standard is remarkable US centric at times. Where's the guy flipping the bottom of his chin? Where's whatever the equivalent in Bangladesh is? (I'm sure there is one...)
Emoji is actually more Japan centric, hence the numerous sushi emoji, bento box emoji and various other Japanese items.
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#63This serves as a reminder that the Unicode standard is remarkable US centric at times. Where's the guy flipping the bottom of his chin? Where's whatever the equivalent in Bangladesh is? (I'm sure there is one...)
Interesting point. Why isn't the unicode standard just "obscene hand gesture" (or similar?) and then localisation can take care of the rest?
I pulled open the standard as linked by cnvogel and expected to see what is in a sense the exact opposite... a list of all vaguely practical hand gestures, with the middle-finger merely one in a sea of gestures. While it is in the middle of some other more generic gestures, some of which definitely have obscene connotations in some cultures [1], it's less exhaustive than I've come to expect from Unicode. See also [2] which lists some cultural middle-finger equivalents, some of which show up in the Unicode list, or in the case of 1F594 ("peace") easily can if the icon designer is not careful. (In fact I think the Unicode sheet shows the obscene-in-the-UK variant.)
I sort of expected to be able to make a crack about it being a bit culturally imperialist not to include the middle finger just because the US considers it obscene, but instead it stands out more than I expected, so I can't.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-ok#Negative_connotation
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_finger#Similar_gestures
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
:-) But even on a mobile device, if you used a Unicode smiley, the HN software would filter it out.
I wonder if it's just lack of proper Unicode support or some sort of protection against Unicode shenanigans.
Protection. Unicode is supported in general: éѲ報.
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we have that now. The Japanese emoji that have been standardized are kindda culturally skewed, but suddenly became very available world wide and a lot of people around the world want their culture to be represented equally. Hence the whole skin color deal.
And flags. The original japanese emoji set only has 10 country flags (japan, korea, germany, china, USA, france, spain, italy, russia and the UK), the Unicode consortium added 26 REGIONAL INDICATOR symbols used in pairs to encode territorial flags using CLDR region subtags e.g. U+1F1FA REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER U followed by U+ 1F1F8 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER S => 🇺🇸 (USA flag)
Frankly, I much prefer having 26 combining symbols over having to maintain a fixed list of country flags in the Unicode standard. That doesn't solve the problem of maintaining country flags but makes it Somebody Else's Problem, which is fine in my book.
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just learned about it's neighbour at 0x1F596 ("RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS")
Given that there are 4 possible places between fingers where to put a separation (2⁴), two hands (⨯2), and each finger could be extended or bent (⨯2⁵) and the hand could be shown from front or back (⨯2), I'm actually quite amazed that they haven't shown due engineering diligence and spent a whole 2¹¹ codepoints to, for once and for all, solve the problem of displaying hand gestures... Even though some will be quite c…
Clearly the solution is to have all those attributes to be combining codepoints over two single base codepoints of RIGHT HAND and LEFT HAND. The only question is whether in canonical form they should come before or after skin tone codepoints.
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
And flags. The original japanese emoji set only has 10 country flags (japan, korea, germany, china, USA, france, spain, italy, russia and the UK), the Unicode consortium added 26 REGIONAL INDICATOR symbols used in pairs to encode territorial flags using CLDR region subtags e.g. U+1F1FA REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER U followed by U+ 1F1F8 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER S => 🇺🇸 (USA flag)
Frankly, I much prefer having 26 combining symbols over having to maintain a fixed list of country flags in the Unicode standard. That doesn't solve the problem of maintaining country flags but makes it Somebody Else's Problem, which is fine in my book.
It also lets you have a semi-decent fallback, where you can have some icon for "This was supposed to be the flag for country code XX but we don't know what that looks like."
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#68It's offensive, a sad commentary on humanity, and I don't mind being down voted on Hacker News for stating it openly. (Actually, if you really want to do things right, just flip me off, yes?)
In what sense is it "a sad commentary on humanity?"
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#69It's offensive, a sad commentary on humanity, and I don't mind being down voted on Hacker News for stating it openly. (Actually, if you really want to do things right, just flip me off, yes?)
Agreed. And the OP going out of his way to push for it is sad. There are more important problems to spend your time on than trying to make it easier to insult each other. If you want to insult someone, you can still do it in English. Your freedom of speech is not restricted.
There are more important problems to spend your time on than criticizing people in internet comment sections, yet here you are.
Re: Finally, it will be possible to flip someone off via emoji
#70Here is the link to the full list of new emojis mentioned in the article: http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/09/ios-9-1-emojis/
Cheers to more symbolic expression and communication!