Live data from Hacker News

It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

zaerl.com

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#21

Perhaps the title should be changed to: It’s Not Wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36 Or some alternative if the above is too long, like: “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36 Both seem more accurate than the current: It’s Not Wrong that (for HN) “ ”.length == 36

"[man with blue shirt facepalm emoji]".length == 36 Checks out.

Only trouble is, he may not be wearing a blue shirt. In my fonts, it’s more teal, and maybe not a shirt.

But I was definitely going to hunt for a description that made it 36 characters long.

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#22

I don’t want emojis in the headlines please. It makes it difficult to read and becomes an arms race for attention. Also I’m not even sure it was a good idea to put them in text. Emojis are a special case that breaks a lot. Now you have to worry about multiple colors, etc.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

It's been a huge success, so hard to portray it as a mistake.

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

> Emojis aren't text Neither are digits, or control characters, strictly speaking. We really shouldn't have been able to have CR and LF explicitly embedded in the text files.

Neither are high and low surrogates - those are big ranges of code points that are illegal except for one specific (and not recommended) encoding (utf-16). Yet, there they will remain in Unicode.

Digits definitely are a form of text though. Unicode is for writing systems, which definitely includes writing numbers

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

It's been a huge success, so hard to portray it as a mistake.

this is what they said about social media and fentanyl

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

> Emojis aren't text Neither are digits, or control characters, strictly speaking. We really shouldn't have been able to have CR and LF explicitly embedded in the text files.

CR & LF are in there for backwards-compatibility with ASCII. Similarly, the first emoji were include in Unicode for compatibility with some encoding systems used for SMS on Japanese mobile carriers. I wish the Unicode folks had drawn a hard line that they weren't going to add any more. If people wanted dingbats, they could go use a dingbats font.

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a huge success, so hard to portray it as a mistake.

this is what they said about social media and fentanyl

Well, we wouldn't want to call fentanyl a mistake - it's a miracle of pain relief used in hospital and pre-hospital medicine all over the world.

Jury's still out on social media, but not definitely not emoji. Incontestable success story

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#27

I don’t want emojis in the headlines please. It makes it difficult to read and becomes an arms race for attention. Also I’m not even sure it was a good idea to put them in text. Emojis are a special case that breaks a lot. Now you have to worry about multiple colors, etc.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

The line is really fuzzy honestly. We have some universal pictograms that are known and reasonably well understood around the world and the way they are used is pretty much a writing system. An icon of a man or women on a bathroom door? Well you may write it in one of a million different styles (fonts) but the general idea is used around the world as a common writing system. I'd say that belongs in unicode.

The real problem is that the alphabets of certain writing systems are unbounded. Emojis are completely unbounded. That's the only reason to have concern with it in unicode. Unicode is a limited set by definition and emojis are an unbounded set.

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#28

I don’t want emojis in the headlines please. It makes it difficult to read and becomes an arms race for attention. Also I’m not even sure it was a good idea to put them in text. Emojis are a special case that breaks a lot. Now you have to worry about multiple colors, etc.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

Why would Egyptian hieroglyphics be legitimate, and emojis illegitimate?

Re: It’s not wrong that (for HN) “[facepalm emoji]”.length == 36

#29

I don’t want emojis in the headlines please. It makes it difficult to read and becomes an arms race for attention. Also I’m not even sure it was a good idea to put them in text. Emojis are a special case that breaks a lot. Now you have to worry about multiple colors, etc.

It definitely wasn't a good idea. Emojis aren't text , they don't belong in Unicode at all. It would be one thing to encode, say, Egyptian hieroglyphics. That would be legitimate. But putting emojis into Unicode was against the purpose of the standard and a huge mistake.

Where do you draw the line?

What about "fancy fonts" (foreign characters that look like latin letters)? Japanese / Chinese ideographs? Common pictograms like "stop sign?" Mathematical symbols?

People made emoticons out of ~100 printable ASCII characters. With thousands of "real" Unicode symbols available, they would have gone wild anyway.

As a person with accessibility needs, I'm honestly glad emojis exist. They at least carry semantic meanings (though some people do abuse them in ways inconsistent with those meanings), unlike random combinations of symbols that the internet community has agreed on.

Post reply on HN