Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Surely there is already some international standards body or panel which deals with food safety and labelling? (maybe ISO 22000 Food Safety Management Systems) If there is a real need for characters to represent food allergens, wouldn't such a body be the right group to come up with appropriate glyphs and then make a proposal to ISO 10646 / Unicode - Chris On 25 July 2015 at 22:13, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I suggest that, in view of the importance of precision in conveying information about food allergens, that the emoji characters for food allergens should be separate characters from other emoji characters. That is, encoded in a separate quite distinct block of code points far away in the character map from other emoji characters, with no dual meanings for any of the characters: a character for a food allergen should be quite separate and distinct from a character for any other meaning. I opine that having two separate meanings for the same character, one meaning as an everyday jolly good fun meaning in a text message and one meaning as a specialist food allergen meaning could be a source of confusion. Far better to encode a separate code block with separate characters right from the start than risk needless and perhaps medically dangerous confusion in the future. I suggest that for each allergen that there be two characters. The glyph for the first character of the pair goes from baseline to ascender. The glyph for the second character of the pair is a copy of the glyph for the first character of the pair augmented with a thick red line from lower left descender to higher right a little above the base line, the thick red line perhaps being at about thirty degrees from the horizontal. Thus the thick red line would go over the allergen part of the glyph yet just by clipping it a bit so that clarity is maintained. The glyphs are thus for the presence of the allergen and the absence of the allergen respectively. It is typical in the United Kingdom to label food packets not only with an ingredients list but also with a list of allergens in the food and also with a list of allergens not in the food. For example, a particular food may contain soya yet not gluten. Thus I opine that two characters are needed for each allergen. I have deliberately avoided a total strike through at forty-five degrees as I opine that that could lead to problems distinguishing clearly the glyph for the absence of one allergen from the glyph for the absence of another allergen. I have also wondered whether each glyph for an allergen should include within its glyph a number, maybe a three-digit number, so that clarity is precise. I opine that two separate characters for each allergen is desirable rather than some solution such as having one character for each allergen and a combining strike through character. The two separate characters approach keeps the system straightforward to use with many software packages. The matter of expressing food allergens is far too important to become entangled in problems for everyday users. For gluten, it might be necessary to have three distinct code points. In the United Kingdom there is a legal difference between gluten-free and no gluten-containing ingredients. To be labelled gluten-free the product must have been tested. This is to ensure that there has been no cross-contamination of ingredients. For example, rice has no gluten, but was a particular load of rice transported in a lorry used for wheat on other days? Yet testing is not always possible in a restaurant situation. William Overington 25 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 04 Aug 2015, at 01:24, Mark E. Shoulson wrote: if you're interested in this kind of pictographic pidgin, take a look at https://www.kwikpoint.com/ Someone already did some of it. Personally I canʼt do, nor support thoroughly, anything about pictographic language. I just answer some e-mails. Iʼm too busy with implementing a relatively modest subset of Unicode at keyboard driver level. But itʼs indeed very interesting to learn about this already thriving publishing, and Iʼm glad that even human lives have been saved thanks to this new way to overcome the language barrier. So as this post refers to one of my replies, I assume the task of thanking Mr Shoulson for this information. I note that Kwikpoint Instructional Systems are used notably when there is no means of calling a translator, as a pragmatic approach like in the example on the home page, where body language is used to complete the item on which it is understandable. By a lucky coincidence, this example has been performed in the country of ancient Babel. Applying the point-to-picture method to food allergens, one could wish to point to skull-and-crossbones, then to an ear of wheat or a loaf of bread, then to an egg, then to a cheese wedge or a glass of milk, then to a lupin flower, then to some kinds of nuts, finishing with skull-and-crossbones again. Because as Mr Freytag points out, the allergen meaning of a food symbol cannot be induced safely enough. And as he explains, itʼs desirable that the needed symbols be at least highly iconic, and ideally regulated by other standards bodies than Unicode. I do wish that Kwikpoint be so successful that the symbols it creates for missing items become widely popular. Best regards, Marcel On 04 Aug 2015, at 01:24, Mark E. Shoulson wrote: On 08/03/2015 10:30 AM, Marcel Schneider wrote: On 29 Jul 2015, at 15:42, William_J_G Overington wrote: Emoji seemed like a wonderful way to achieve communication through the language barrier. We remember that Esperanto was also a hopeful way to unify the language, raising much enthusiasm among its followers. IMHO a pictograph based script can hardly be enough performing, unless it ends up to become a kind of new Esperanto except that it doesnʼt include speech. It's already noted that this is totally out of scope for Unicode, but if you're interested in this kind of pictographic pidgin, take a look at https://www.kwikpoint.com/ Someone already did some of it. ~mark
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Please may I draw to your attention the following blog post. http://www.michellesblog.co.uk/emoji-ing-food-allergens/ The blog is by the same lady that runs the following website, a specialist website about food allergens and freefrom food.. http://www.foodsmatter.com/ William Overington 6 August 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 29 Jul 2015, at 10:21, William_J_G Overington wrote: Alternately, scanning the EAN barcode on the package could give access to a database intended for food information. This requires the use of a smartphone or other compatible device. That is a good idea. In which case the emoji would not need to be encoded on the package, yet would be sent by the database facility. Using EAN barcode to database and the results sent to the end user would need a two-way communication link and that could possibly mean queueing problems as the database facility would possibly be answering requests from many people. Another possibility would be to encode the Unicode characters for the allergens contained in the food within a QR code (Quick Response Code) on the package. Decoding could then be local, in the device being used to scan the QR code. [...] Somehow this device-relying information system wouldnʼt make me really happy. IMHO the most straightforward communication relies on the packaging, and for this a standardized set of emojis would have been useful. For more clarity, a textual list may complete the labelling, probably using the Latin scientific names. Every allergic person must then be given by his practician or other health care provider a personal list of allergens, a kind of allergen profile, both in local language and in Latin, plus the pictograph. We should perhaps take into consideration that allergen lists may be very long, and translating them to emojis will make them somewhat bulky, particularly on small packages. So the emojis will be used only if desired or required. Best regards, Marcel Schneider
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 29 Jul 2015, at 15:42, William_J_G Overington wrote: [On 28 Jul 2015, at 22:26, gfb hjjhjh wrote:] As according to http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html , emoji characters do not have single semantics. Which I think it is not what the original proposer want? Or were I misunderstanding that Garth Wallace has already indicated in his reply to your post that it was me, not the original proposer, who wanted single semantics. [...] The easiest thing appears to be to not call the items emoji. I opine that a new word is needed to mean the following. A character that looks like it is an emoji character yet has precise semantics. There is an issue here that is, in my opinion, quite fundamental to the future of encoding items that are currently all regarded as emoji: an issue that goes far beyond the matter of encoding emoji characters for food allergens. Communication through the language barrier is of huge importance and may become more so in the future. IMHO weʼve already overcome the language barrier, as we all communicate in English, at the image of medieval Latin communication across Europe, ancient Roman Empire communication, Koine Greek from Alexanderʼs conquests on. Emoji seemed like a wonderful way to achieve communication through the language barrier. We remember that Esperanto was also a hopeful way to unify the language, raising much enthusiasm among its followers. IMHO a pictograph based script can hardly be enough performing, unless it ends up to become a kind of new Esperanto except that it doesnʼt include speech. Yet if semantics are not defined, then there is a problem. Not only emojis, even natural language semantics are often not precisely defined, but that doesnʼt hinder us in defining the semantics of a particular message by adding more words. Equally an allergen emoji might be preceded or followed by a poison emoji (U+2620) to make the health threat unambiguous. Please consider the matter of text to speech in the draft Unicode Technical Report 51. I remember years ago I was asked in this mailing list what chat means. I think that discussing the meaning of chat is some classic Unicode cultural matter. In English it is an informal talk between two or more people, in French it is a cat. As I can see, in todayʼs French, “chat” has the meaning of its English homophone, except when the context makes the (original French) zoological meaning unambiguous. Having said that, I hurry up adding that the English word “chat” has been francicized to “tchatche”, but not very successfully. So the sequence of Unicode characters only has meaning in the context that they are being used. And Unicode provides even language tags to disambiguate. Now the big opportunity with emoji could be to assist communication through the language barrier. Thatʼs exact, emojis can assist communication, but they cannot replace classical character based communication entirely. From reading about semantics in the linked document it appears that that opportunity might be disappearing or may have gone already. This, in my opinion, is unfortunate. The food allergen characters could, by being precisely defined with one and only one meaning, be either an exception to the general situation or could be the start of a trend. We cannot define precisely and irrevocably the meaning of any grapheme, except in mathematics. We only can describe its use at a given time of history. I donʼt believe that Unicode has the power of forbiding any semantics of any emoji, nor did it ever aim at. See the English apostrophe: Unicodeʼs primary advice has been overrun by mainstream usage. A name other than emoji is needed for such characters that have one and only one meaning, that meaning precisely defined. Creating a new script is not in Unicodeʼs purpose, which is (please check if Iʼm right) to encode all *existing* scripts. I underscore *existing* with respect to the present context, but originally the stress is on *all*. Encoding *all* existing scripts used in present or in past times, is a great purpose and Unicode is about to reach the goal. Subsequently, *if* a user community creates and uses a *new* script made of pictographs or of other signs, Unicode can be pleased to encode it. Sure. [...] For example, one such character could be used to be placed before a list of emoji characters for food allergens to indicate that that a list of dietary need follows. For example, My dietary need is no gluten no dairy no egg There could be a way to indicate the following. My diet can include soya My nourishment too includes soya in form of much tonyu (whether fermented or not), and it excludes dairy, egg, meat, poultry, fish, honey; things that were very included in the past. The problem as I see it, is whether people are at ease with expressing it, or not. Personally I donʼt hesitate using much natural language to explain
Refining communication about poisons (was: Re: Emoji characters for food allergens)
On 29 Jul 2015, at 18:39, Doug Ewell wrote: Andrew West wrote: There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. For what little it is worth, I agree with Andrew on this. Sorry, I disagree, as I explain in my previous e-mail: http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m08/0009.html Earlier I mentioned U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES and U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN, two symbols which have been in Unicode since the dawn of time. [...] While communication about food allergens is undoubtedly important, it's hard to imagine that communication about poisons and biohazards is any less important. Agreed. Itʼs even more important, as food allergies are triggered by slow poisoning through residual pesticides and food additives, and through the consumption of bad quality cereals grown with abuse of mineral fertilizers. This is why U+2620 ☠ SKULL AND CROSSBONES should be used in food labelling whenever the ingredients are *not* organically grown, or certain food additives are used. To complete, I therefore suggest to encode a panel of food hazard symbols, among which: + PESTICIDE RESIDUES SYMBOL + MINERAL FERTILIZER OVERUSE SYMBOL + ARTIFICIALLY COLOURED SYMBOL (use: certain synthetical food colors cause health issues) + STABILIZER SYMBOL + SALTY FOOD SYMBOL + VETERINARY DRUGS RESIDUES SYMBOL (Thatʼs so big an issue that the FDA is validating a *new* drug residues analysis selection model for interstate milk shipping.) and so on. Equally, the artificially impoverished food ingredients like white sugar and white flour, are acting poison-like on metabolical level (more explanations would be off-topic) and must thus be declared whenever they are not recompleted with bran, germ, and molasses. To achieve this, the following pictographs will be useful: + EMPOVERISHED FOOD WARNING SYMBOL + MISSING BRAN AND GERM SYMBOL + MISSING MOLASSES SYMBOL Declaring the least and most probably unexistent traces of food allergens, but concealing from the consumers all these health threatening poisons that are likewise purposely added to everyday food, or the basic carbs are transformed to, is a particularly insidious form of hypocrisy. This criticism must be taken as a motivation to encode these new pictographs. It does not target in any way the proposer of the allergen emojis, nor any other person here around. It refers to the economical background of food allergen labelling, and thus has its place in this thread. Best regards, Marcel Schneider
RE: Emoji characters for food allergens
Once back when I was living in Thailand, I was riding in a taxi to the Bangkok airport on a recently-opened highway. There were road signs posted at intervals that had a two-digit number (“60” or something like that) enclosed in a circle. Having had enough experience with road signage in my home country and also other countries, I recognized this to be a speed limit. But knowing common practices for how many Thais at the time would obtain their driver’s license, and the education level of many Thais coming from rural areas to work as taxi drivers in Bangkok, I was curious enough to ask the driver what the sign meant. (He being monolingual, this was all in Thai.) He thought for a moment and then responded that it was the distance to the airport. Anecdote aside, the assumption of these discussions is that symbols are iconic — which means that the symbol communicates a conventional semantic. And the point of this being _conventional_ is that the semantic is not self-evident from the appearance of the image, but rather is based on a shared agreement. For example, a photograph of a chair is not iconic since it is an ostensive rendition of an actual chair. But a symbol of an iron with a dot inside it intended to mean “can be ironed with low heat” is iconic because it’s meaning is conventional, and like any convention, must be learned. Some conventions may be universally learned, but very few are. Most are limited to particular cultures, and even if used in many cultures, may be learned by only small portions of the given culture. Even something like a speed limit sign that a driver without a given culture sees every day and is expected to understand is not necessarily something that the driver has learned. Much less something like icons for handling of laundry, which have been used in several countries for a few decades now but that nobody has ever been required to learn, and that few people actually do learn to any great extent. Peter From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-boun...@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Asmus Freytag (t) Sent: Monday, August 3, 2015 12:01 PM To: unicode@unicode.org Subject: Re: Emoji characters for food allergens I'm sorry to really disagree with this little understandable criticism of laundry symbols. The most encountered of the care tags are self-explaining, as the washing and iron temperature limits or discouraging. The other symbols mainly concern dry cleaning and laundry professionals. The laundry symbols are like traffic signs. The ones you see daily aren't difficult to remember, but any there are always some rare ones that are a bit baffling. What you apparently do not realize is that in significant parts of the world, these symbols are not common (or occur only as adjunct to text). There's therefore no daily reinforcement at all. Where you live, the situation is reversed; no wonder you are baffled. All chefs understand English, I would regard that statement to have a very high probability of being wrong. Which would make any conclusions based on it invalid.
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Nice anecdote. I share the concerns you raise in your reflection on the limits of shared conventions. Unicode cannot be so constrained that it encodes only universally accepted icons, but it should be constrained to not encode characters on foot of possible conventions that are not actually demonstrated anywhere. There's currently no convention for denoting allergens by emoji (pictorial renditions), so that usage is something that is speculative at the moment. Not as speculative is the suggestion that certain food items should be added - it seems to be an acceptable principle to encode iconic foods. That would argue for emoji for milk and bread (w/o cross aliasing it as gluten), but not for soy beans, for example. A./ On 8/3/2015 3:24 PM, Peter Constable wrote: Once back when I was living in Thailand, I was riding in a taxi to the Bangkok airport on a recently-opened highway. There were road signs posted at intervals that had a two-digit number (“60” or something like that) enclosed in a circle. Having had enough experience with road signage in my home country and also other countries, I recognized this to be a speed limit. But knowing common practices for how many Thais at the time would obtain their driver’s license, and the education level of many Thais coming from rural areas to work as taxi drivers in Bangkok, I was curious enough to ask the driver what the sign meant. (He being monolingual, this was all in Thai.) He thought for a moment and then responded that it was the distance to the airport. Anecdote aside, the assumption of these discussions is that symbols are iconic — which means that the symbol communicates a conventional semantic. And the point of this being _/conventional/_ is that the semantic is not self-evident from the appearance of the image, but rather is based on a shared agreement. For example, a photograph of a chair is not iconic since it is an ostensive rendition of an actual chair. But a symbol of an iron with a dot inside it intended to mean “can be ironed with low heat” is iconic because it’s meaning is conventional, and like any convention, must be learned. Some conventions may be universally learned, but very few are. Most are limited to particular cultures, and even if used in many cultures, may be learned by only small portions of the given culture. Even something like a speed limit sign that a driver without a given culture sees every day and is expected to understand is not necessarily something that the driver has learned. Much less something like icons for handling of laundry, which have been used in several countries for a few decades now but that nobody has ever been required to learn, and that few people actually do learn to any great extent. Peter *From:*Unicode [mailto:unicode-boun...@unicode.org] *On Behalf Of *Asmus Freytag (t) *Sent:* Monday, August 3, 2015 12:01 PM *To:* unicode@unicode.org *Subject:* Re: Emoji characters for food allergens I'm sorry to really disagree with this little understandable criticism of laundry symbols. The most encountered of the care tags are self-explaining, as the washing and iron temperature limits or discouraging. The other symbols mainly concern dry cleaning and laundry professionals. The laundry symbols are like traffic signs. The ones you see daily aren't difficult to remember, but any there are always some rare ones that are a bit baffling. What you apparently do not realize is that in significant parts of the world, these symbols are not common (or occur only as adjunct to text). There's therefore no daily reinforcement at all. Where you live, the situation is reversed; no wonder you are baffled. All chefs understand English, I would regard that statement to have a very high probability of being wrong. Which would make any conclusions based on it invalid.
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 08/03/2015 10:30 AM, Marcel Schneider wrote: On 29 Jul 2015, at 15:42, William_J_G Overington wrote: Emoji seemed like a wonderful way to achieve communication through the language barrier. We remember that Esperanto was also a hopeful way to unify the language, raising much enthusiasm among its followers. IMHO a pictograph based script can hardly be enough performing, unless it ends up to become a kind of new Esperanto except that it doesnʼt include speech. It's already noted that this is totally out of scope for Unicode, but if you're interested in this kind of pictographic pidgin, take a look at https://www.kwikpoint.com/ Someone already did some of it. ~mark
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
BTW, the UTC declined to accept the allergen emoji set proposal. While some of the food items may be acceptable and the emoji subcommittee could re-propose them, there are principled problems with trying to deal with allergens as a set of emoji. So that is off the table. Mark https://google.com/+MarkDavis *— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —* On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 2:55 AM, Leo Broukhis l...@mailcom.com wrote: The discussion widens: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/08/02/2248257/unicode-consortium-looks-at-symbols-for-allergies
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On Jul 29, 2015, at 7:27 AM, Andrew West andrewcw...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 July 2015 at 14:42, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: For example, one such character could be used to be placed before a list of emoji characters for food allergens to indicate that that a list of dietary need follows. For example, My dietary need is no gluten no dairy no egg There could be a way to indicate the following. My diet can include soya There already is, you can write My diet can include soya. If you are likely to swell up and die if you eat a peanut (for example), you will not want to trust your life to an emoji picture of a peanut which could be mistaken for something else or rendered as a square box for the recipient. There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. Andrew I've recently tried to closely follow the care tags on my clothes instead of dumping most of them in the cold/cold batch. When I look at the care tags, I squint at the hieroglyphs[1] for five seconds, give up, and then start looking for instructions written in English — that is, useful instructions. I'd imagine a chef trying to 'read' dietary-needs symbols would be similarly trying, only with dire consequences for getting it wrong. I can see why someone might want to communicate their allergies in a language-agnostic manner while traveling abroad, but for that to work, everyone would need to memorize a bunch of pictographs on the off chance that a foreign traveller is incapable of conveying his or her allergies in a mutually understood spoken/written language. This seems like a worse strategy than carrying around a card that says I can't have nuts or eggs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_symbol
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 03 Aug 2015, at 10:57, Nathan Sharfi wrote: I've recently tried to closely follow the care tags on my clothes instead of dumping most of them in the cold/cold batch. When I look at the care tags, I squint at the hieroglyphs[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_symbol] for five seconds, give up, and then start looking for instructions written in English — that is, useful instructions. I'm sorry to really disagree with this little understandable criticism of laundry symbols. The most encountered of the care tags are self-explaining, as the washing and iron temperature limits or discouraging. The other symbols mainly concern dry cleaning and laundry professionals. Many clothes are shipped across the world, so English would not always be suitable as a language. Further, symbols stay longer readable while text is often washed out. I'd imagine a chef trying to 'read' dietary-needs symbols would be similarly trying, only with dire consequences for getting it wrong. That's another case. All chefs understand English, so presenting allergen lists in English is a working strategy. The concern added by William is about how to present such a list, as he wishes a symbol for I'm allergic to and a symbol for My diet can include. For this I suggest the poison and heart symbols. To follow your advice, these may be used as bullets for lists written in English. I can see why someone might want to communicate their allergies in a language-agnostic manner while traveling abroad, but for that to work, everyone would need to memorize a bunch of pictographs on the off chance that a foreign traveller is incapable of conveying his or her allergies in a mutually understood spoken/written language. This seems like a worse strategy than carrying around a card that says I can't have nuts or eggs. I understand the issue. Best regards, Marcel Schneider
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
I'm sorry to really disagree with this little understandable criticism of laundry symbols. The most encountered of the care tags are self-explaining, as the washing and iron temperature limits or discouraging. The other symbols mainly concern dry cleaning and laundry professionals. The laundry symbols are like traffic signs. The ones you see daily aren't difficult to remember, but any there are always some rare ones that are a bit baffling. What you apparently do not realize is that in significant parts of the world, these symbols are not common (or occur only as adjunct to text). There's therefore no daily reinforcement at all. Where you live, the situation is reversed; no wonder you are baffled. All chefs understand English, I would regard that statement to have a very high probability of being wrong. Which would make any conclusions based on it invalid.
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
general public only need to understand those symbol that related to themselves, people who prepare food can have a legend for which icon mean what written in their own language. And i think it is actually better to establish another standard instead of base it on Unicode as unicode can't do the job of promoting people to use these symbol unlike what standard formulation committee can do. 2015年8月3日 下午4:53於 Nathan Sharfi mailingli...@ngalt.com寫道： On Jul 29, 2015, at 7:27 AM, Andrew West andrewcw...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 July 2015 at 14:42, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: For example, one such character could be used to be placed before a list of emoji characters for food allergens to indicate that that a list of dietary need follows. For example, My dietary need is no gluten no dairy no egg There could be a way to indicate the following. My diet can include soya There already is, you can write My diet can include soya. If you are likely to swell up and die if you eat a peanut (for example), you will not want to trust your life to an emoji picture of a peanut which could be mistaken for something else or rendered as a square box for the recipient. There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. Andrew I've recently tried to closely follow the care tags on my clothes instead of dumping most of them in the cold/cold batch. When I look at the care tags, I squint at the hieroglyphs[1] for five seconds, give up, and then start looking for instructions written in English — that is, useful instructions. I'd imagine a chef trying to 'read' dietary-needs symbols would be similarly trying, only with dire consequences for getting it wrong. I can see why someone might want to communicate their allergies in a language-agnostic manner while traveling abroad, but for that to work, everyone would need to memorize a bunch of pictographs on the off chance that a foreign traveller is incapable of conveying his or her allergies in a mutually understood spoken/written language. This seems like a worse strategy than carrying around a card that says I can't have nuts or eggs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_symbol
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 03 Aug 2015, at 10:39:13, Mark Davis ☕️ wrote: BTW, the UTC declined to accept the allergen emoji set proposal. While some of the food items may be acceptable and the emoji subcommittee could re-propose them, there are principled problems with trying to deal with allergens as a set of emoji. So that is off the table. Since food emoji encoding goes on then, there are a few points to flash back on last week, sorry to be late. On 26 Jul 2015, at 05:45, William_J_G Overington wrote: I suggest that, in view of the importance of precision in conveying information about food allergens, that the emoji characters for food allergens should be separate characters from other emoji characters. That is, encoded in a separate quite distinct block of code points far away in the character map from other emoji characters, with no dual meanings for any of the characters: a character for a food allergen should be quite separate and distinct from a character for any other meaning. I fear that discouraging the use of food pictographs, may they represent allergen containing food or not, in current messages and with any desirable meaning could prevent users from becoming familiar with. Browsing the Charts I cannot see another place for food related symbols than the last Supplemental Symbols and Picrographs 1F900 block. This is already far away from the Emoticons block U+1F600. The meaning, as often in Unicode, is context-determined. Finding an allergen pictograph on a food package with a convenient markup would then have added an unambiguous sense. I'll try to explain a bit later why emojis may be useful. I opine that having two separate meanings for the same character, one meaning as an everyday jolly good fun meaning in a text message and one meaning as a specialist food allergen meaning could be a source of confusion. Far better to encode a separate code block with separate characters right from the start than risk needless and perhaps medically dangerous confusion in the future. Unicode would have encoded the new allergen pictographs under a Food Allergens subhead, ensuring thus the primary meaning. Furthermore, an everyday use will primarily be less obvious in most of the cases, as food allergens are preferrably depicted as ingredients, while typical everyday food emojis like the fast food shown elsewhere in this thread show mostly prepared food. For example, U+1F35A BOWL OF RICE, while gluten-free, will rather have a dish meaning, whereas 1F33E EAR OF RICE may refer more precisely to the ingredient, and a future EAR OF WHEAT will symbolize gluten-containing cereals, as it does already in food labelling. BTW I find it urgent to encode all these ears, as WHEAT, BUCKWHEAT (part of the proposal), and so on, because actually only *two* kinds of cereals have their ear in Unicode: 1F33D EAR OF MAIZE, and 1F33E EAR OF RICE. I suggest that for each allergen that there be two characters. The glyph for the first character of the pair goes from baseline to ascender. The glyph for the second character of the pair is a copy of the glyph for the first character of the pair augmented with a thick red line from lower left descender to higher right a little above the base line, the thick red line perhaps being at about thirty degrees from the horizontal. Thus the thick red line would go over the allergen part of the glyph yet just by clipping it a bit so that clarity is maintained. The glyphs are thus for the presence of the allergen and the absence of the allergen respectively. Sorry, I donʼt believe that this would have been agreed, because package design is done in high-end software as QuarkXPress, InDesign, PagePro, so it would be easy to add some expressive and unambiguous markup to a unique symbol. IMHO it might be nice to have something surrounding, like a circle for the presence and a (barred) square for the absence, or conversely. About colors, the absence of an allergen from a given food being good news for patients, we could opt for some green tone, while by contrast the red color conveys rather a warning and might thus be suitable for its presence. With analogy to road symbols, a red circle could perhaps best express this case, as allergic consumers must avoid the product. I thought about a triangle, but this has an inner field too small for the symbol while it takes too much place (a triangle being bulkier than square and circle). If the industry agrees, a triangle for presence may be adopted. It is typical in the United Kingdom to label food packets not only with an ingredients list but also with a list of allergens in the food and also with a list of allergens not in the food. For example, a particular food may contain soya yet not gluten. Thus I opine that two characters are needed for each allergen. Correspondingly, French legislation requires that the allergens be marked up with bold font style in the ingredients
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 28 Jul 2015, at 15:00, Michael Everson wrote [I placed the quotation first]: On 26 Jul 2015, at 06:05, Garth Wallace wrote: On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 9:43 AM, William_J_G Overington wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I'm skeptical. I understand the rationale, but several of the proposed characters are essentially SMALL PILE OF BROWN DOTS and would be difficult to distinguish at typical sizes. [Iʼve already answered on this point.] I do NOT understand the rationale. Emojis are not for labelling things. They’re for the playful expression of emotions. Standardized symbols for allergens might be useful, if there were a textual use for them. On 28 Jul 2015, at 20:26, Garth Wallace replied: Well, there are several emoji for various items encountered in daily life, and I think the reasoning is that allergens are important things to refer to because of their health effects. It's a bit of a leap to say that means there's a need for dedicated pictograms though. I agree, it does seem to be putting the cart before the horse. I believe the issue should be replaced into its original context. All over the world, pictographs allow to convey some vital information to tourists, but more specially in CJK countries they avoid also encumbering packages with lots of Latin, Cyrillic, and possibly Greek and other scripts. Well, personally I would suggest to cite the allergens with their Latin scientific name (as TRITICUM for wheat and by extension, gluten), but I would suggest now to remember that prior to depreciate the proposal, we should ask ourselves and the concerned countries if such a Latin labelling is acceptable. The fact that Mr Komatsu took the pain of working out this proposal, tends to prove it is *not*. Best regards, Marcel Schneider
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
When it comes to symbolic and / or pictorial representations, there are roughly three kinds. I'm going to use "symbol" here for both symbols and emoji when the latter are used in contexts where there also are (or could be) symbols - and I don't limit symbol to the subset of "encoded" symbols. Regulatory or otherwise standardized symbols Conventional symbols Informal symbols When it comes to encoding symbols of the first group, the status of the symbol (or picture) is defined externally. There's a standard for laundry symbols, Unicode could decide to encode them. I'll make no judgment here whether that would be desirable. The point I want to focus on is that Unicode should never contemplate to invent extensions to that set, or its own set of laundry symbols. It would be equally inappropriate to allow third parties to "reify" their set of laundry symbols by getting them encoded while the official set is not. Conventional symbols include things like the skull and cross bones. The image is used in many contexts and has a variety of meanings, which are defined conventionally. These conventions don't have to be very tight: an emoji version of the symbol might equally likely refer to carnival pirates as to danger. Many emojis and symbols are more informal than that. They either stand in for the object depicted, or for a concept related to the object. A beer mug may refer to "one beer", or to "let's have a beer", etc. In user interfaces a clock face could refer to time, to the concept of waiting, or the concept of "past" (as for items in a search history). Such uses border on conventional, so there is a gray line. There's a separate classification that's somewhat independent, and divides symbols into by how recognizable they are. If want wanted to divide them into three sets one would get iconic specific somewhat hard to identify Some shapes and images are highly iconic. They are easy to recognize no matter whether rendered symbolic or realistic. And most users are familiar with most of them. Some are merely recognizable. Perhaps an image of an object with a distinct shape. Many users are familiar with the symbol or the depicted object, and the typical rendition on a screen is also recognizable. The there are symbolic or realistic renderings that are less distinct, more easily confused with similar shapes or images, or simply not familiar to most users. (Even highly standardized symbols, like many math symbols, are unfamiliar to most users unless widely read in mathematics -- so this has nothing to do with the degree of standardization, or degree of abstraction in the depiction). For something like allergens, if there's a need to represent them symbolically/pictorially, it would foremost be as regulatory images. Images with precise limit on their depiction, highly iconic designs that make it hard to misidentify them. And, by virtue of being regulated, they could be forced to be present widely so people would encounter them constantly and become and remain familiar with them. The least useful thing to be done would be to encode poorly chosen pictorial rendition of various food ingredients in the hope that users might get the idea that they stand for allergens. Items on the proposed list were not highly recognizable - some I would class in the "hard to identify" group. And, being informal pictures (emoji) they would have no commonality in appearance, negating the benefit of being able to scan for a simple, fixed shape when trying to assess a food item as safe to eat. Unicode would be very wise to avoid encoding anything for the purpose of depicting "allergens" -- however, as pictorial renditions of food items are popular for other reason, I think some of the proposed emoji could qualify for "generic" use as "food item x". If someone wants to (mis-)use these for allergen information, that should be something that the standard remains firmly ignorant of and something that the Consortium doesn't encourage or endorse. A./
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
The discussion widens: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/08/02/2248257/unicode-consortium-looks-at-symbols-for-allergies
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
I'll try to respond to all, Please don't. What Marcel wrote was as follows: quote I'll try to respond to all, having not much time outside my main concerns, sorry. end quote When I first read that, and indeed when I read it again after reading Andrew's comment, I read it as Marcel wishing that he could reply individually to each of several posts in this thread, but as he was busy, he would reply in just the one post, the post he was then writing, to various points. Thus there was no need to ask him not to do so, as he had already done it in that same post. As someone else has decided to post supporting the request, I reply that I enjoy reading Marcel's posts and that I hope that he continues. These are important issues for end users of encoding standards and for consumers generally as they are about food allergens and the labelling of food packaging. A request not to post and support for a request not to post without stating any reason whatsoever is, in my opinion, unfair. William Overington 31 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
it might not be enough to avoid allergens, we should pay attention to the presence of palm oil because of the useless devastation of primates' habitats while enough fallow land exists in a concerned country for palm oil production until 2050 I believe that for topics like this, there are other lists or forums that are more appropriate. Well, Marcel was writing in the context of reading packaging information in a thread about emoji characters for food allergens. Now it could perhaps be said that encoding a symbol to indicate the presence of palm oil is off-topic to the thread and that a new thread spinning off from this thread would be desirable, yet still in this mailing list. However, it could also be said that as this thread is about emoji and food ingredients and knowing what is in a particular foodstuff that, although not strictly on-topic, it is relevant to discuss encoding a symbol to indicate the presence of palm oil in this thread. I had considered suggesting an emoji to express that a food is vegan, yet held back as it is not an allergen issue, more a lifestyle choice. Yet a statement that a foodstuff is suitable for a vegan diet does appear on some food packaging. Some packages also have an indication of spice strength, though I have observed that this is, within the gamut of my observations, only for things that are regarded as spicy as such, like curries, not just for a little spice in, say, the ingredients list of a soup. For me, as a gluten-avoiding vegan who avoids spicy food, the encoding of an emoji regarding gluten, yet not one for vegan or for no spice seems an issue that could reasonably be addressed while considering emoji for food allergens. So, I thank Marcel for raising the issue of palm oil in this thread. William Overington 31 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 31 Jul 2015 at 15:32, William_J_G Overington wrote: A request not to post and support for a request not to post without stating any reason whatsoever is, in my opinion, unfair. Thank you; however I believe that Mr West's and Mr Freytag's reactions were triggered also by my hasty complaints about Microsoft. Fundamentally I didn't respect a mailing list rule which is to always respond to a particular request or statement, to stick with the thread. I'm sorry to have uselessly vented; nevertheless I'm thinking about some precise replies which I'll send soon. All the best, Marcel Schneider Message du 31/07/15 15:32 De : William_J_G Overington A : koma...@google.com, andrewcw...@gmail.com, asmus-...@ix.netcom.com, charupd...@orange.fr Copie à : unicode@unicode.org Objet : Re: Emoji characters for food allergens I'll try to respond to all, Please don't. What Marcel wrote was as follows: quote I'll try to respond to all, having not much time outside my main concerns, sorry. end quote When I first read that, and indeed when I read it again after reading Andrew's comment, I read it as Marcel wishing that he could reply individually to each of several posts in this thread, but as he was busy, he would reply in just the one post, the post he was then writing, to various points. Thus there was no need to ask him not to do so, as he had already done it in that same post. As someone else has decided to post supporting the request, I reply that I enjoy reading Marcel's posts and that I hope that he continues. These are important issues for end users of encoding standards and for consumers generally as they are about food allergens and the labelling of food packaging. A request not to post and support for a request not to post without stating any reason whatsoever is, in my opinion, unfair. William Overington 31 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
The easiest thing appears to be to not call the items emoji. I opine that a new word is needed to mean the following. A character that looks like it is an emoji character yet has precise semantics. So, like, a localizable sentence character? Well, a localizable sentence character with an emoji-like symbol would indeed be an example of such a character. Yet not every character that looks like it is an emoji character yet has precise semantics would be a localizable sentence. Indeed, not every localizable sentence symbol would look like an emoji character. My research has used symbols 23 units in width by 7 units in height. For example, please consider an emoji symbol to mean railway station and, for example, please consider an emoji symbol to mean peppermint tea. If, for example, an emoji symbol that starts off to mean railway station became used to mean transportation station then the way to express specifically a railway station as an emoji rather than expressing just a place that may be either or both of a railway station and a bus station would become lost. If, for example, a symbol that starts off to mean peppermint tea became used to mean herbal tea, then the way to express specifically peppermint tea as an emoji rather than expressing just a cup of herbal tea that might be peppermint or one of many other flavours of herbal tea would become lost. The emoji characters for food allergens are not localizable sentences, yet they do need, in my opinion, precise definitions and should be encoded in a separate block and given a name not as emoji but as some other name that combines them looking like emoji yet emphasises the precision of their definition: maybe they should be double width so as to avoid confusion: maybe each glyph should include a surrounding landscape format ellipse so as to emphasise their difference from ordinary emoji. Something that has a precise, sentence-level meaning that is not linguistically determined? We aren't doing those here, as far as I know. Well, I am not a linguist and I do not fully understand that question or the comment that follows it. I have just tried to state a problem that I feel exists and hope that people who are expert in such matters can consider it and hopefully find a solution. William Overington 30 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 7/30/2015 12:07 PM, Andrew West wrote: On 30 July 2015 at 18:07, Marcel Schneider charupd...@orange.fr wrote: I'll try to respond to all, Please don't. Andrew What Andrew said. A./
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 7/30/2015 10:07 AM, Marcel Schneider wrote: it might not be enough to avoid allergens, we should pay attention to the presence of palm oil because of the useless devastation of primates' habitats while enough fallow land exists in a concerned country for palm oil production until 2050 I believe that for topics like this, there are other lists or forums that are more appropriate. A./
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 30 July 2015 at 18:07, Marcel Schneider charupd...@orange.fr wrote: I'll try to respond to all, Please don't. Andrew
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
I'll try to respond to all, having not much time outside my main concerns, sorry. Indeed I agree that there are limits to the automatization of interhuman communication. In practice, whenever we are in contact with one another, the use of natural language is preferrable. Emoticons and other pictographs IMHO are intended to complete what written language cannot express in a reasonably little number of words, or for ready orientation. When at a moment or another we fall back to natural language, using this from the beginning on seems more efficient. My bad idea about responding to an invitation by a set of nutrition constraint pictographs ends up to rather prepare a predefined message in every language we're expecting invitations in. About reading packaging information, it might not be enough to avoid allergens, we should pay attention to the presence of palm oil because of the useless devastation of primates' habitats while enough fallow land exists in a concerned country for palm oil production until 2050, just as an example of how food choices are complex and need thorough awareness of numerous parameters, far beyond allergens, regardless of how life threatening these often are. Moreover, the lives of everybody on earth are threatened by imminent climate change (please see http://avaaz.org/en/ too). The Babel issue about how to communicate in language confusion might soon be resolved, if there is no more communication at all... Best regards, Marcel Schneider
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Andrew West andrewcwest at gmail dot com wrote: There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. For what little it is worth, I agree with Andrew on this. Earlier I mentioned U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES and U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN, two symbols which have been in Unicode since the dawn of time. Both of these are Level 2 emoji, according to emoji-data.txt [1], and are accorded no special treatment, placement, or display guidelines beyond that. While communication about food allergens is undoubtedly important, it's hard to imagine that communication about poisons and biohazards is any less important. [1] http://www.unicode.org/Public/emoji/1.0//emoji-data.txt -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 07/29/2015 09:42 AM, William_J_G Overington wrote: The easiest thing appears to be to not call the items emoji. I opine that a new word is needed to mean the following. A character that looks like it is an emoji character yet has precise semantics. So, like, a localizable sentence character? Something that has a precise, sentence-level meaning that is not linguistically determined? We aren't doing those here, as far as I know. ~mark
re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Hi William, Sorry. On 28 Jul 2015, at 12:19, William_J_G Overington wrote: Well a lot could be done information technology-wise to facilitate communication through the language barrier. For example in text messages, sent by email, or over a mobile telephone link or maybe thrown to a device nearby, to communicate dietary needs, using the emoji characters for food allergens that we are discussing in this thread: this information could then be localized into text automatically in the receiving device; For example, by using a smartphone by reading from an RFID tag (radio-frequency identification tag) on a shelf label in a supermarket display about a product . The RFID tag could contain the food allergen information about the food encoded using the emoji characters for food allergens that we are discussing in this thread: this information could then be localized into text automatically in the smartphone. Alternately, scanning the EAN barcode on the package could give access to a database intended for food information. This requires the use of a smartphone or other compatible device. Another use of allergen emojis would be to respond to an invitation by SMS. Somebody inviting to dinner at home, can gather information from guests about what allergens to keep away from the ingredients list when cooking. This is typically an emoji case. The emotions implied with food allergens are concern, fear and anxiety. But, as already discussed in this thread, emoticons/emojis must not necessarily convey an emotion, the term having become somehow a generic for symbols. Best regards, Marcel Schneider Message du 28/07/15 12:19 De : William_J_G Overington A : Marcel Schneider Copie à : gwa...@gmail.com, unicode@unicode.org, koma...@google.com Objet : re: Emoji characters for food allergens Hi Marcel I have also wondered whether each glyph for an allergen should include within its glyph a number, maybe a three-digit number, so that clarity is precise. I'm not sure whether another code would facilitate the handling of these warnings. IMHO the allergen name in natural language is more efficient in communication. This needs however to identify and learn the words prior to travelling into a foreign language country, while a code point is more obvious to read if it's meaning is at hand. Well a lot could be done information technology-wise to facilitate communication through the language barrier. For example in text messages, sent by email, or over a mobile telephone link or maybe thrown to a device nearby, to communicate dietary needs, using the emoji characters for food allergens that we are discussing in this thread: this information could then be localized into text automatically in the receiving device; For example, by using a smartphone by reading from an RFID tag (radio-frequency identification tag) on a shelf label in a supermarket display about a product . The RFID tag could contain the food allergen information about the food encoded using the emoji characters for food allergens that we are discussing in this thread: this information could then be localized into text automatically in the smartphone. Rest regards, William Overington 28 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Hi Marcel Alternately, scanning the EAN barcode on the package could give access to a database intended for food information. This requires the use of a smartphone or other compatible device. That is a good idea. In which case the emoji would not need to be encoded on the package, yet would be sent by the database facility. Using EAN barcode to database and the results sent to the end user would need a two-way communication link and that could possibly mean queueing problems as the database facility would possibly be answering requests from many people. Another possibility would be to encode the Unicode characters for the allergens contained in the food within a QR code (Quick Response Code) on the package. Decoding could then be local, in the device being used to scan the QR code. Both of these methods, EAN barcode and QR code, could be used to communicate through the language barrier, either by viewing the emoji, or by the emoji becoming converted to localized text in the device that is being used by the end user. Best regards, William Overington 29 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Probably if these symbols are to be added to unicode, it would better to allocate blocks that are not belong to emoji for them. I'm curious what this is supposed to accomplish. It's not as though people viewing such a symbol on a screen or in print, or entering it on a phone keypad, will know or care what its Unicode code point is, or what other types of symbols have nearby code points. Yet some people might be using a system with an Insert Symbol... facility to prepare an email or to design a label or whatever. In such Insert Symbol... facilities it is often the case that characters are listed in Unicode code point order. My original purpose of suggesting separate blocks of code points was to seek to avoid a symbol relating to a food allergen having more than one meaning, one precise and medical, one or more others just everyday chat. The issue of the meaning of an emoji character not being precisely defined that has been discussed in other posts in this thread makes having separate blocks and maybe not even terming the characters as emoji but as precise emoji or some other new term, become very important so as to avoid confusion in the application of the symbols. Also, suppose that a person programming an app wishes to have the software in the app notice whatever food allergen emoji characters are in a message. Having them all within two contiguous blocks of code points would assist the programming process. There was also a coding aesthetics aspect that separate blocks seems better to me as a way to organize such an encoding. William Overington 29 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 2015/07/29 23:27, Andrew West wrote: On 29 July 2015 at 14:42, William_J_G Overington My diet can include soya There already is, you can write My diet can include soya. If you are likely to swell up and die if you eat a peanut (for example), you will not want to trust your life to an emoji picture of a peanut which could be mistaken for something else Yes, in the worst case for something like I like peanuts. or rendered as a square box for the recipient. There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. Andrew .
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Indeed; depending on special Emoji characters to convey unambiguously an crucial sentence beyond language barriers also treads very close to using those localizable sentences we mustn't talk about. ~mark On 07/29/2015 10:27 AM, Andrew West wrote: On 29 July 2015 at 14:42, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: For example, one such character could be used to be placed before a list of emoji characters for food allergens to indicate that that a list of dietary need follows. For example, My dietary need is no gluten no dairy no egg There could be a way to indicate the following. My diet can include soya There already is, you can write My diet can include soya. If you are likely to swell up and die if you eat a peanut (for example), you will not want to trust your life to an emoji picture of a peanut which could be mistaken for something else or rendered as a square box for the recipient. There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. Andrew
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 29 July 2015 at 14:42, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: For example, one such character could be used to be placed before a list of emoji characters for food allergens to indicate that that a list of dietary need follows. For example, My dietary need is no gluten no dairy no egg There could be a way to indicate the following. My diet can include soya There already is, you can write My diet can include soya. If you are likely to swell up and die if you eat a peanut (for example), you will not want to trust your life to an emoji picture of a peanut which could be mistaken for something else or rendered as a square box for the recipient. There may be a case to be made for encoding symbols for food allergens for labelling purposes, but there is no case for encoding such symbols as a form of symbolic language for communication of dietary requirements. Andrew
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
As according to http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html , emoji characters do not have single semantics. Which I think it is not what the original proposer want? Or were I misunderstanding that Garth Wallace has already indicated in his reply to your post that it was me, not the original proposer, who wanted single semantics. Thank you for the link. I have followed it and read in the document what it says about single semantics. Oh! Well, it seems to me that something has got to give in order for Emoji characters for food allergies to work effectively. The easiest thing appears to be to not call the items emoji. I opine that a new word is needed to mean the following. A character that looks like it is an emoji character yet has precise semantics. There is an issue here that is, in my opinion, quite fundamental to the future of encoding items that are currently all regarded as emoji: an issue that goes far beyond the matter of encoding emoji characters for food allergens. Communication through the language barrier is of huge importance and may become more so in the future. Emoji seemed like a wonderful way to achieve communication through the language barrier. Yet if semantics are not defined, then there is a problem. Please consider the matter of text to speech in the draft Unicode Technical Report 51. I remember years ago I was asked in this mailing list what chat means. I think that discussing the meaning of chat is some classic Unicode cultural matter. In English it is an informal talk between two or more people, in French it is a cat. So the sequence of Unicode characters only has meaning in the context that they are being used. Now the big opportunity with emoji could be to assist communication through the language barrier. From reading about semantics in the linked document it appears that that opportunity might be disappearing or may have gone already. This, in my opinion, is unfortunate. The food allergen characters could, by being precisely defined with one and only one meaning, be either an exception to the general situation or could be the start of a trend. A name other than emoji is needed for such characters that have one and only one meaning, that meaning precisely defined. Those characters could still be colourful and could look emoji-ish. Maybe they could be double width so as to show their distinctiveness? Would double width characters be a problem as regards applying them in systems such as mobile telephones at present? Now, such precisely defined emoji could be entirely representationally pictures, yet there could also be abstract pictures and also pictures that are partly representational and partly abstract. For example, one such character could be used to be placed before a list of emoji characters for food allergens to indicate that that a list of dietary need follows. For example, My dietary need is no gluten no dairy no egg There could be a way to indicate the following. My diet can include soya There is a situation that affects further discussion of some aspects of this matter, though not all aspects of this matter, as a totally symbolic representation could still be discussed. http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m06/0208.html However, there is also the following. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/moratorium Please note the use of the word temporary in the definition. So maybe all is not lost and discussion of all aspects will become possible at some future time. William Overington 29 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
That's what Mr. Overington wants, but he's not the original proposer. The proposal by Hiroyuki Komatsu http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197r-emoji-food-allergens.pdf does not say anything of the sort, and by unifying some with existing characters implies otherwise. On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 1:26 PM, gfb hjjhjh c933...@gmail.com wrote: As according to http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html , emoji characters do not have single semantics. Which I think it is not what the original proposer want? Or were I misunderstanding that 2015年7月29日 上午3:28於 Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org寫道： gfb hjjhjh c933103 at gmail dot com wrote: Probably if these symbols are to be added to unicode, it would better to allocate blocks that are not belong to emoji for them. I'm curious what this is supposed to accomplish. It's not as though people viewing such a symbol on a screen or in print, or entering it on a phone keypad, will know or care what its Unicode code point is, or what other types of symbols have nearby code points. The Miscellaneous Symbols block contains U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES, U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN, and U+263A WHITE SMILING FACE. -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
I do NOT understand the rationale. Emojis are not for labelling things. They’re for the playful expression of emotions. Standardized symbols for allergens might be useful, if there were a textual use for them. On 26 Jul 2015, at 06:05, Garth Wallace gwa...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 9:43 AM, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I'm skeptical. I understand the rationale, but several of the proposed characters are essentially SMALL PILE OF BROWN DOTS and would be difficult to distinguish at typical sizes. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Hi Marcel I have also wondered whether each glyph for an allergen should include within its glyph a number, maybe a three-digit number, so that clarity is precise. I'm not sure whether another code would facilitate the handling of these warnings. IMHO the allergen name in natural language is more efficient in communication. This needs however to identify and learn the words prior to travelling into a foreign language country, while a code point is more obvious to read if it's meaning is at hand. Well a lot could be done information technology-wise to facilitate communication through the language barrier. For example in text messages, sent by email, or over a mobile telephone link or maybe thrown to a device nearby, to communicate dietary needs, using the emoji characters for food allergens that we are discussing in this thread: this information could then be localized into text automatically in the receiving device; For example, by using a smartphone by reading from an RFID tag (radio-frequency identification tag) on a shelf label in a supermarket display about a product . The RFID tag could contain the food allergen information about the food encoded using the emoji characters for food allergens that we are discussing in this thread: this information could then be localized into text automatically in the smartphone. Rest regards, William Overington 28 July 2015
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On Jul 28, 2015, at 6:00 AM, Michael Everson ever...@evertype.com allegedly wrote: Emojis are not for labelling things. They’re for the playful expression of emotions. Is that what they're for? I thought they were (encoded) to satisfy certain device manufacturers. And, what is the emotion playfully expressed by ?
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Richard Cook rscook at wenlin dot com wrote: And, what is the emotion playfully expressed by ? I'm having a burger and fries for lunch but can't be bothered to type all that into this text message lol -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 7/28/2015 8:07 AM, Richard Cook wrote: On Jul 28, 2015, at 7:53 AM, Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org wrote: Richard Cook rscook at wenlin dot com wrote: And, what is the emotion playfully expressed by ? "I'm having a burger and fries for lunch but can't be bothered to type all that into this text message lol" Is all that one emotion or two? Remember: e-moji == picto-graph and emoji != emoticon. A./ -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On Jul 28, 2015, at 7:53 AM, Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org wrote: Richard Cook rscook at wenlin dot com wrote: And, what is the emotion playfully expressed by ? I'm having a burger and fries for lunch but can't be bothered to type all that into this text message lol Is all that one emotion or two? -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Probably if these symbols are to be added to unicode, it would better to allocate blocks that are not belong to emoji for them. Also, it should be noted that emoji can look very different across different places, see http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html and http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/index.html#Design_Guidelines
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
Well, there are several emoji for various items encountered in daily life, and I think the reasoning is that allergens are important things to refer to because of their health effects. It's a bit of a leap to say that means there's a need for dedicated pictograms though. I agree, it does seem to be putting the cart before the horse. On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 6:00 AM, Michael Everson ever...@evertype.com wrote: I do NOT understand the rationale. Emojis are not for labelling things. They’re for the playful expression of emotions. Standardized symbols for allergens might be useful, if there were a textual use for them. On 26 Jul 2015, at 06:05, Garth Wallace gwa...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 9:43 AM, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I'm skeptical. I understand the rationale, but several of the proposed characters are essentially SMALL PILE OF BROWN DOTS and would be difficult to distinguish at typical sizes. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On Jul 28, 2015, at 8:56 AM, Asmus Freytag asm...@ix.netcom.com wrote: On 7/28/2015 8:07 AM, Richard Cook wrote: On Jul 28, 2015, at 7:53 AM, Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org wrote: Richard Cook rscook at wenlin dot com wrote: And, what is the emotion playfully expressed by ? I'm having a burger and fries for lunch but can't be bothered to type all that into this text message lol Is all that one emotion or two? Remember: e-moji == picto-graph and emoji != emoticon. hey Michael, You want with that? -R A./ -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
gfb hjjhjh c933103 at gmail dot com wrote: Probably if these symbols are to be added to unicode, it would better to allocate blocks that are not belong to emoji for them. I'm curious what this is supposed to accomplish. It's not as though people viewing such a symbol on a screen or in print, or entering it on a phone keypad, will know or care what its Unicode code point is, or what other types of symbols have nearby code points. The Miscellaneous Symbols block contains U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES, U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN, and U+263A WHITE SMILING FACE. -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
As according to http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html , emoji characters do not have single semantics. Which I think it is not what the original proposer want? Or were I misunderstanding that 2015年7月29日 上午3:28於 Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org寫道： gfb hjjhjh c933103 at gmail dot com wrote: Probably if these symbols are to be added to unicode, it would better to allocate blocks that are not belong to emoji for them. I'm curious what this is supposed to accomplish. It's not as though people viewing such a symbol on a screen or in print, or entering it on a phone keypad, will know or care what its Unicode code point is, or what other types of symbols have nearby code points. The Miscellaneous Symbols block contains U+2620 SKULL AND CROSSBONES, U+2623 BIOHAZARD SIGN, and U+263A WHITE SMILING FACE. -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 26 Jul 2015 at 07:14, Garth Wallace wrote: On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 9:43 AM, William_J_G Overington wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I'm skeptical. I understand the rationale, but several of the proposed characters are essentially SMALL PILE OF BROWN DOTS and would be difficult to distinguish at typical sizes. Only two, buckwheat and sesame. As disclaimed, none is final. For buckwheat we can opt for an ear of buckwheat rather than an amount of grains. Typically the form of the buckwheat grain could be used, as it's resemblance with a beechnut lead to its German name Buchweizen. But scaling a single grain to almost 1:1 might become hard to understand at a glyphic level. Marcel
re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On 26 Jul 2015, at 05:45, William_J_G Overington wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I suggest that, in view of the importance of precision in conveying information about food allergens, that the emoji characters for food allergens should be separate characters from other emoji characters. That is, encoded in a separate quite distinct block of code points far away in the character map from other emoji characters, with no dual meanings for any of the characters: a character for a food allergen should be quite separate and distinct from a character for any other meaning. I opine that having two separate meanings for the same character, one meaning as an everyday jolly good fun meaning in a text message and one meaning as a specialist food allergen meaning could be a source of confusion. Far better to encode a separate code block with separate characters right from the start than risk needless and perhaps medically dangerous confusion in the future. I suggest that for each allergen that there be two characters. The glyph for the first character of the pair goes from baseline to ascender. The glyph for the second character of the pair is a copy of the glyph for the first character of the pair augmented with a thick red line from lower left descender to higher right a little above the base line, the thick red line perhaps being at about thirty degrees from the horizontal. Thus the thick red line would go over the allergen part of the glyph yet just by clipping it a bit so that clarity is maintained. The glyphs are thus for the presence of the allergen and the absence of the allergen respectively. It is typical in the United Kingdom to label food packets not only with an ingredients list but also with a list of allergens in the food and also with a list of allergens not in the food. For example, a particular food may contain soya yet not gluten. Thus I opine that two characters are needed for each allergen. I have deliberately avoided a total strike through at forty-five degrees as I opine that that could lead to problems distinguishing clearly the glyph for the absence of one allergen from the glyph for the absence of another allergen. I have also wondered whether each glyph for an allergen should include within its glyph a number, maybe a three-digit number, so that clarity is precise. I'm not sure whether another code would facilitate the handling of these warnings. IMHO the allergen name in natural language is more efficient in communication. This needs however to identify and learn the words prior to travelling into a foreign language country, while a code point is more obvious to read if it's meaning is at hand. I opine that two separate characters for each allergen is desirable rather than some solution such as having one character for each allergen and a combining strike through character. This is consistent with the Unicode policy of not decomposing overlay diacritics in writing characters. Symbols however are intended for use with combining marks for symbols, like 20E0 COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE BACKSLASH. We hope that the food allergens issue's importance make implement an efficient system of language-independent labelling. The two separate characters approach keeps the system straightforward to use with many software packages. The matter of expressing food allergens is far too important to become entangled in problems for everyday users. For gluten, it might be necessary to have three distinct code points. In the United Kingdom there is a legal difference between gluten-free and no gluten-containing ingredients. To be labelled gluten-free the product must have been tested. This is to ensure that there has been no cross-contamination of ingredients. For example, rice has no gluten, but was a particular load of rice transported in a lorry used for wheat on other days? Yet testing is not always possible in a restaurant situation. All the best, Marcel
Re: Emoji characters for food allergens
On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 9:43 AM, William_J_G Overington wjgo_10...@btinternet.com wrote: Emoji characters for food allergens An interesting document entitled Preliminary proposal to add emoji characters for food allergens by Hiroyuki Komatsu was added into the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) Document Register yesterday. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15197-emoji-food-allergens.pdf This is a welcome development. I'm skeptical. I understand the rationale, but several of the proposed characters are essentially SMALL PILE OF BROWN DOTS and would be difficult to distinguish at typical sizes.
