Did Apple merely change the language selection UI, or did they also remove flags from their emoji font?
OP only mentions the former, but many replies seem to be referencing the latter.
Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
41–50 of 108 posts
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#42This might be for political reasons. MS removed all flag emojis entirely in Windows 10, likely because of that island where all of our GPUs get manufactured, or the open air prison next to where our military surplus gets sent to.
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#43Except flags are a terrible way of identifying a language. Many (most?) countries have multiple official languages, and most languages are spoken in more than one country, so there is not a one to one mapping between flags and languages. And that's not even getting into the political side.
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#44The Unicode Consortium has indicated they won't accept new flags as emoji. https://www.engadget.com/unicode-no-flag-emoji-please-131509... Given this, it's a sensible move; it won't be long before the available set no longer reflects the full set of countries.
That's mostly correct, but flags for countries with a recognised ISO country code will still be included, with I guess the most recent example being South Sudan.
One wonders what flags are next.
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#45The Unicode Consortium has indicated they won't accept new flags as emoji. https://www.engadget.com/unicode-no-flag-emoji-please-131509... Given this, it's a sensible move; it won't be long before the available set no longer reflects the full set of countries.
Related issue I hadn't thought of before: what happens if the flag is changed? Suppose it partly depends if the unicode description is 'flag of the country blah' or blazon-style description of what it looks like.
The Afghan flag has this exact problem now. Plus the political issue of recognizing or not the Taliban government
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#46I don't really see how having "EN" instead of a US or UK or whatever flag is really going to make people happier or sadder.
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Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#47I 100% applaud this. I've always used ABC Extended because I thought a flag in the system menu was gaudy and weirdly nationalistic. I know I live in the US and use the American English keyboard layout. Similarly, I don't need a Chinese flag every time I switch to a Chinese keyboard.
I don’t see a Chinese flag… where are you seeing this? There are a ton of different Chinese input methods and they all have a symbol which is white text on a gray background. Same as Japanese.
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Related issue I hadn't thought of before: what happens if the flag is changed? Suppose it partly depends if the unicode description is 'flag of the country blah' or blazon-style description of what it looks like.
Font vendors update their fonts, I'd guess.
Not great that a historical usage of the older flag would start rendering as the new one.
Maybe Unicode needs to incorporate a date into each glyph /s
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#49Incidentally, that’s how Windows has been indicating keyboard input language in the taskbar all along.
Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4
#50The Unicode Consortium has indicated they won't accept new flags as emoji. https://www.engadget.com/unicode-no-flag-emoji-please-131509... Given this, it's a sensible move; it won't be long before the available set no longer reflects the full set of countries.
This is incorrect. Most flag emoji are based off of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2[0], which will continue to be updated. The Unicode Consortium’s decision to not accept new flags refers to flags outside that standard, like the pride flag or the flags of subnational regions.