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Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows

geyer.dev

271–280 of 328 posts

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

#271
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My idea is that an app should do its best to work with the OS and not override defaults, that includes system fonts. It is good for consistency, accessibility, etc... If Windows doesn't ship with flag emoji, or any character for that matter, that shouldn't be Chrome's problem. Android is an OS, Google is responsible of it, so they get to decide what goes in their fonts.

By that argument, they shouldn't override the OS trust store either, but most browsers do. There's a compromise between consistency and user friendliness.

I'm not GP, but yes, IMO browsers shouldn't override the OS trust store (and shouldn't ship their own flag emojis).

You are a web browser, not an operating system. Stay in your lane.

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

#272
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming French- or German-speaking Swiss users don't know that they speak French or German? Or are you claiming that they don't know what the French or German flags look like?

Come on. I'm saying people in general don't want to be associated with a flag that's not of their country.

I've played video games that required me to select the Union Jack to select english language.

Despite two wars in our history, it does not bother me.

Because it's a language selection screen for fucks sake, I'm not marrying anything, or committing to a lifelong alliance.

If selecting the "wrong" flag makes you feel anything other than the mildest annoyance, seek professional mental help.

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

#273
post #60
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just refuse to commit. E.g. Google Maps, to this day, will not show the country for any Crimean city when you click on it to bring up its info panel. If you do this with e.g. Kherson, you get "Kherson, Kherson Oblast, Ukraine". But if you do it with Sevastopol, you only get the city name, not the region & country. It also shows dotted borders between Crimea and both Russia and Ukraine.

Isn’t Google Maps blocked in Russia anyway? Crimea is a different story, as many countries recognize it to be in some kind of limbo and treat it as neither Russian nor Ukrainian. I think Yandex (Russian Google) removed borders completely from their maps. Also because it’s impossible to figure out where the Russian government would like them to be. Might change on a daily basis. Google maps added the „gulf of America“…

Google did this way back, sometime in 2016 IIRC, before they were blocked in Russia. I'm not really sure why they still keep going with this esp. since they still show the entirety of Donbas as Ukrainian, and it has been occupied for just as long as Crimea has been.

Yandex censorship around this is really amusing. They did indeed drop all mentions of countries and borders everywhere, for one thing. But also in Alice (their LLM chatbot), it's to the point where if you ask it to prepare a road trip from Sochi to Bucharest and describe the route in detail including which countries it passes through, it refuses to answer.

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

#274
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they used the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) from the USGS. If this buffoonery does pass, it will reflect in the government official data source - and thus on Google maps?

And nobody outside of the US cares about what's inside those official databases. If Trump changes the name of China to "Smelly Food Country" it might be required to change this in US Google Maps But if this propagates to Google Maps in other countries people will just laugh at them and might stop using it.

I don't think Google is required to change anything, since it's not a government agency.

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

#275
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "actually in control" mean? When the IRA set up a checkpoint in Rosslea, should that have moved the border on the map? When there are disputes over uninhabited islands, do you want it to show whoever visited first? Obviously these are small examples, but the same issues apply to full-scale civil wars. You'd also be essentially legitimising the right of conquest if as soon as country A invades country B you…

> You'd also be essentially legitimising the right of conquest Documenting reality doesn't endorse what happened. Istanbul was Constantinople. Shit happens. If I'm travelling, I'd much rather the flags and borders reflect the situation on the ground instead of making meaningless humanitarian gestures.

The situation on the ground is that if you, say, visit Crimea by obtaining a Russian visa, you might not even be able to enter Ukraine afterwards. This feels like something that also needs to be reflected.

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

#276
post #134
post #48

yes, we know, there are historical territorial disputes all over the world. But can somebody here make a case that this is not actually/solely to appease China (over Taiwan presumably)?

Practically every place in the world where it's disputed whether it's part of another country or independent creates a flag issue. Do you include a Quebec flag? Northern Ireland? Somaliland? Palestine?

Given the context though we don't need to look at all possible hypothetical flags, only those that Unicode recognizes:

https://unicode.org/Public/emoji/latest/emoji-sequences.txt

This list notably doesn't have Quebec, Northern Ireland, or Somaliland. But it does have Taiwan and Palestinian Territories.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese denialism over Taiwan is really, really demented. It's not that they just claim Taiwan - they pretend they already own it, and stick their fingers in their ears if you point out facts on the ground. I suppose they did the same with Mongolia, until they couldn't.

[flagged]

They are not physically in control of Taiwan, so no, they haven't "won the war" in that respect.

Not that it matters, because legitimacy of holding territory is not based on winning wars.

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

#278
post #82

Personally I prefer rendering country codes over flags because it allows me to spot and scold anyone who uses the flag of Chad to represent Romania (they look pretty much the same as emojis).

Ivory Coast flag being used for Ireland is another common one, though easier to spot. I assume because it's listed first alphabetically.

Doesn't help that most emoji fonts render all flags in the same aspect ratio.

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

#279
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…

The Ivory Coast flag is a different aspect ratio to Ireland's flag. Ours is longer.

The colour-based representation on their flag is similar to ours too, but with the colours reversed.

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

#280
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

using "reddit terminology" (not that there's anything good about reddit anymore but they do have the terminology), this post is about microsoft and the flag emojis, and up and down the thread are a zillion comments all about "it's generic territorial disputes". I try to start a subthread about perhaps an alternative idea, and I get responses that are all about the same blather that's already everywhere else. People h…

> I try to start a subthread about perhaps an alternative idea, and I get responses that are all about the same blather that's already everywhere else. People here have no intellectual subtlety: I wouldn't bother commenting to elicit responses that are all the same thing that's already here. Try to say something different. Make a case. The "reddit terminology" for this is /r/iamverysmart . If everyone else understand…

fact: 99% of people are dumber than the top 1%: so, "If everyone else understands your comment a different way" it precisely matches the case that they're all stupid-er than the 1%.

And that's how you construct an argument.

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