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Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

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Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#171

Post by lxgr »

psychoslave wrote: post #70

The main issue I have with these flags is that they are more often than not used to indicate language, not country. But many countries have more than one official language and many languages are official language of more than one country. Not many languages have some official flags though. There is one for Esperanto and Francophonie for example. But while anyone speaking Esperanto will certainly recognize the green f…

People using national flags to (imprecisely/incorrectly) represent languages is really not the fault of national flags, though.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#172

Post by pkasting »

josephcsible wrote: post #40

I don't get why Google doesn't want to ship them with Chrome, since they're not taking any more of a political stance by doing so than they are by shipping them with Android.

A 1.4MB binary size cost is massive. I'm a chrome developer and our threshold for what you need to explain the cost/benefit of is 16KB.

To me this just isn't worth the cost.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#173

Post by DiggyJohnson »

scrollaway wrote: post #91
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short of web standardization, how should a language picker be designed for a website where presumably the main design goal is a non-default-language speaking user can pick out their language?

You can use the iso code of the language itself as an abbreviation, with the name of the language in that target language next to it. The iso code is OK to use if you need a short “icon” for the language. There is a few standard icons representing “Translation” if you need iconography for the idea of a language switcher, too. EN - English FR - Français RU - Русский

Fair alternative, but would this not be much less recognizable on the page to a non-native speaker of the default language? What if you have so many locales that a menu or drop down is required? This does not seem to me like it’s a better solution, it just has different downsides.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#174

Post by lern_too_spel »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #144
josephcsible wrote: post #40

I don't get why Google doesn't want to ship them with Chrome, since they're not taking any more of a political stance by doing so than they are by shipping them with Android.

Noto Color Emoji weighs more than 20 MB, which makes it difficult to embed to the browser. I think that's mainly due to the embedded PNGs so it would be technically possible to get rid of them and use vector fonts for special occasions, though. (In fact, I believe Firefox did so with its built-in Twemoji.)

They just need the flag glyphs, not everything else.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#175

Post by philwelch »

esperent wrote: post #123
bawolff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, people don't know the ISO codes for their languages. As a canadian, i know what EN means. However when sites use flags its a mystery. Am i supposed to pick canada or is that "canadian french". Maybe im supposed to pick the american flag, but eww feel like a traitor and i want the u's in my words. Is it the british flag? I have no idea. Flags for languages are stupid. Not to mention for all those languages that…

Just wait because all official EU sites now use the Irish flag to represent English, and it's getting more common in other websites made in Europe. As an Irish person I can't help feeling a frisson of satisfaction. But as a developer, this is just asking for confusion, especially since the Irish flag is already confusing enough. I mean, we could have a beautiful white harp on a green background representing Irish cul…

Shouldn’t the Irish flag represent Irish Gaelic though?

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#176

Post by wkat4242 »

> After doing more digging than I feel like I should have needed to, I found my answer: it appears that due to concerns about the fact that acknowledging the existence of certain countries can be perceived as a nominally political stance, Microsoft has opted to just avoid the issue altogether by not including country flag emojis in Windows’ system font.

Sigh.. I'm so sick of companies pandering to bad regimes. This, google displaying the south china sea as part of china locally, meta dropping their DEI program after trump took over. None of the companies I know showing pride flags in Arab countries on their website during pride month (while of course widely proclaiming their support in PR and internal material everywhere else). It's all so fake. Stick by your values, then we stick by you as a customer.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#177

Post by esperent »

philwelch wrote: post #175
esperent wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait because all official EU sites now use the Irish flag to represent English, and it's getting more common in other websites made in Europe. As an Irish person I can't help feeling a frisson of satisfaction. But as a developer, this is just asking for confusion, especially since the Irish flag is already confusing enough. I mean, we could have a beautiful white harp on a green background representing Irish cul…

Shouldn’t the Irish flag represent Irish Gaelic though?

English is an official language of Ireland, and by far the most wildly spoken. Gaeilge is also an official language but However, this is another reason why flags aren't a good choice for languages. It works for some of the main languages - German, French, etc. where there's a clear one to one link between originating country's flag and language.

It's less clear for English - the UK flag, the US flag, the Irish flag and apparently even the Canadian flag gets used.

It's basically impossible to choose a flag for minority languages, and many countries have multiple official and widely spoken unofficial languages. What flag should represent Balinese, for example?

I don't have a better solution, and if your site is translated to just a couple of languages it's fine. But I guess as machine translation gets closer to perfect and very cheap, it'll become more common to have lots of translations.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#178

Post by [deleted] »

scrollaway wrote: post #153
troad wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had initially posted a joke reply to this, but I'll post a serious one: I care a lot more about getting necessary services to elderly, semi-literate Russian-speaking babushkas fleeing Ukraine, by giving them an obvious indicator (on e.g. a name tag) that someone can speak to them, help them, then I care about your completely absurd, concocted 'well akshuallys'.

I work in Brussels with a lot of Ukrainians — both fighters and refugees. I’ve made this a part of my day to day life since the full scale invasion. We until recently even shared an office with the Ukrainian Voices refugee committee, in fact. Seeing as you say you care about getting services to those people, let’s talk about putting your money where your keyboard is. Reach out via my profile and let me know how much…

[deleted]

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#179

Post by zinekeller »

fsckboy wrote: post #141
mjr00 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question was > can somebody here make a case that this is not actually/solely to appease China (over Taiwan presumably)? I gave one (of many) examples where this would be relevant for a country other than China. If you don't think South Korea is politically important enough to matter, then use the Israel/Palestinian flag situation as something that certainly is. Or more simply: no, this is not just because of Ch…

saying "it's North Korea" does not make a case that it's North Korea (especially when I acknowledged these disputes are all around the world, indicating that I understood that already). Fail.

There are ROK (South Korea) laws banning the display of DPRK (North Korea) imagery (and more), including the DPRK flag. Microsoft considers the SK market important enough that it has a separate version of Windows (the KN subvariant), so it's not really far-fetched that this is a consideration too.

Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

#180

Post by lifthrasiir »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #174
lifthrasiir wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noto Color Emoji weighs more than 20 MB, which makes it difficult to embed to the browser. I think that's mainly due to the embedded PNGs so it would be technically possible to get rid of them and use vector fonts for special occasions, though. (In fact, I believe Firefox did so with its built-in Twemoji.)

They just need the flag glyphs, not everything else.

Those flag glyphs still have to be harmonized with other emoji glyphs anyway, so including all of them is the safest approach.
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