Re: [GNC-dev] emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Herbert Thoma]

This is a really strange discussion ...

Am 12.04.2018 um 17:01 schrieb Wm via gnucash-devel:

<...>


Disagree strongly.  Show me a swastika and I have an emotion.  Don't care if it 
is new amerika Trump supporters or not ... and I'm not from a jewish background.

Why can you not see that these emoticons / glyphs / whatever have meaning ?

What is there to be denied ?

Why is "I hate women" OK in an emoticon but not in an account description ?


How should the developers prohibit that any user names an account "I hate 
women"?
Or "I love Trump"?

Any string can hold any unicode character and the user is free to edit any 
string
as he pleases. And this is a *good thing* (TM).

If you don't like emoticons or account names like "I hate women" then just don't
use such strings. But you should not impose your view of the world onto other 
users.

 Herbert.
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Re: [GNC-dev] emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 12, 2018, at 8:01 AM, Wm via gnucash-devel  
> wrote:
> 
> On 08/04/2018 04:38, John Ralls wrote:
> 
>> Well, I suppose that’s always a concern with pictographs, eh? The standard 
> 
> *the* standard ?

https://www.unicode.org/standard/standard.html 


> 
>> specifies a description, in a few words of English, of what each code point 
>> is supposed to represent. 
> 
> *supposed* to
> 
> > After that it’s up to the artist creating the glyph to interpret that 
> > description and create something in 64 pixels that evokes the description.
> 
> Do you really not care what they represent ?
> 
> Do you really not care that many things (possibly some opinions you may not 
> like) may be represented ?
> 
>> There’s no way the standard can specify what the artist comes up with nor 
>> how individuals will interpret the work. 
> 
> Disagree strongly.  Show me a swastika and I have an emotion.  Don't care if 
> it is new amerika Trump supporters or not ... and I'm not from a jewish 
> background.
> 
> Why can you not see that these emoticons / glyphs / whatever have meaning ?
> 
> What is there to be denied ?
> 
> Why is "I hate women" OK in an emoticon but not in an account description ?
> 
> Really not getting your view on this, JohnR
> 
>> So I said that the trumpet emoji (code point 0x1f3ba, see 
>> https://emojipedia.org/trumpet/  for some 
>> examples of how different artists have interpreted it) isn’t going to 
>> display a Trump (who doesn’t yet have a Unicode code point).
> 
> Maybe you support him :(
> 
> I can assure you there are any number of non complimentary representations of 
> Trump on line.  The thing I am struggling with is why you are attempting to 
> support the idiot!
> 
> FFS this shouldn't be about you being a fuckwit supporter!
> 
> This is mean to be about accounting software.
> 

Time to go get your meds adjusted. There’s nothing political at all in the 
letter you quoted, nor do your responses have anything to do with the quotes 
they follow.

Regards,
John Ralls
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Re: [GNC-dev] emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Wm via gnucash-devel]

On 08/04/2018 04:38, John Ralls wrote:

Well, I suppose that’s always a concern with pictographs, eh? The standard 


*the* standard ?

specifies a description, in a few words of English, of what each code point is supposed to represent. 


*supposed* to

> After that it’s up to the artist creating the glyph to interpret that 
description and create something in 64 pixels that evokes the description.


Do you really not care what they represent ?

Do you really not care that many things (possibly some opinions you may 
not like) may be represented ?


There’s no way the standard can specify what the artist comes up with nor how individuals will interpret the work. 


Disagree strongly.  Show me a swastika and I have an emotion.  Don't 
care if it is new amerika Trump supporters or not ... and I'm not from a 
jewish background.


Why can you not see that these emoticons / glyphs / whatever have meaning ?

What is there to be denied ?

Why is "I hate women" OK in an emoticon but not in an account description ?

Really not getting your view on this, JohnR


So I said that the trumpet emoji (code point 0x1f3ba, see 
https://emojipedia.org/trumpet/  for some 
examples of how different artists have interpreted it) isn’t going to display a Trump 
(who doesn’t yet have a Unicode code point).


Maybe you support him :(

I can assure you there are any number of non complimentary 
representations of Trump on line.  The thing I am struggling with is why 
you are attempting to support the idiot!


FFS this shouldn't be about you being a fuckwit supporter!

This is mean to be about accounting software.

--
Wm

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Re: [GNC-dev] emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 7, 2018, at 1:08 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel  
> wrote:
> 
> On 07/04/2018 19:50, Buddha Buck wrote:
> 
> [much snipped]
> 
> thanks to JohnR too, BB's message was more fun to reply to
> 

;-), 

[SNIP]
>>> half for fun is this (.)(.) female breasts, an overweight man's chest or
>>> a pair of eyes ?  We think we know when we use them and they're often
>>> fine amongst friends ... but do they belong in an accounting application
>>> as accounting is, usually, formal in one sense or another and often used
>>> for communicating to people outside of our immediate social circle.
>>> 
>> The emoticon you gave is not an emoji, and is not standardized by the
>> Unicode Consortium. It seems a non-sequitor to this discussion.
> 
> Now *that* I find confusing.
> 
> Y'see, JohnR suggested every emoji had a single meaning, representation, etc 
> OR that it wasn't anything to do with us if, say, someone represented someone 
> badly in their own accounts.

It’s pretty simple: In my response to your saying that Buddha’s message was 
more fun to reply to, I used two “smiley faces”. The first is an emoticon, 
composed of ASCII (i.e. code points 0x20-0x7f) characters, the second an emoji, 
code point 0x1f601. The menu item that’s causing you such distress is for 
easily inserting the latter. For the technical details, see 
https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/index.html 
.

[SNIP]
> 
>> Besides, the "whole bunch of people owning these things" quickly discovered
>> that the issue you bring up is a problem, and they got together to
>> standardize it to eliminate the problem. When you send an emoji to someone
>> else, they don't necessarily get the exact same rendering of the emoji that
>> you sent, but if you sent a "崙", they should get an emoji representing a
>> "woman with headscarf".
> 
> I was wondering about that because I'm not seeing "woman with headscarf".
> 
> JohnR said they should be the same for everyone but they aren't for me.
> 
> Do I need to belong to a club to see the same thing as other people when I 
> receive "lady wearing long dress beating horse" or "man in top hat having gay 
> sex with slave from 1980's reproduction of slave literature really cool in 
> the southern US states now" ?

Well, I suppose that’s always a concern with pictographs, eh? The standard 
specifies a description, in a few words of English, of what each code point is 
supposed to represent. After that it’s up to the artist creating the glyph to 
interpret that description and create something in 64 pixels that evokes the 
description. There’s no way the standard can specify what the artist comes up 
with nor how individuals will interpret the work. So I said that the trumpet 
emoji (code point 0x1f3ba, see https://emojipedia.org/trumpet/ 
 for some examples of how different artists 
have interpreted it) isn’t going to display a Trump (who doesn’t yet have a 
Unicode code point).

[SNIP]

Regards,
John Ralls

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Re: emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Wm via gnucash-devel]

On 07/04/2018 19:50, Buddha Buck wrote:

[much snipped]

thanks to JohnR too, BB's message was more fun to reply to


On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 2:12 AM Wm via gnucash-devel <
gnucash-devel@gnucash.org> wrote:



Perhaps, but I don't think it is GnuCash's place to dictate that.

Besides, until the time comes where I am audited, the government
authorities do not need to see what I keep in my personal books. Even then,
the IRS auditor may be slightly confused by my calling my Medicare
withholdings "Expense:Taxes:NHS" 


NHS? omigosh maybe the USA will eventually be a developed nation :)


and my Federal withholdings
"Expenses:Taxes:Inland Revenue", but ultimately, she isn't going to care.
If she is a nerd of the classics, she might ask why I have "Expenses:☤"
instead of "Expenses:⚕", to which I'll answer "this is the US; the symbol
of the God of Commerce is more appropriate than the symbol of healing,
don't you think?".


A lovely answer.


and from a personal POV I just don't like them and think their use
inappropriate in a broad project like gnc that tries to be agnostic.



GNC does try to be agnostic. Adhering to a broad standard like Unicode is
*precisely* being agnostic. Catering to your personal POV is not agnostic.


Disagree, we can talk about which bit I disagree with later.


half for fun is this (.)(.) female breasts, an overweight man's chest or
a pair of eyes ?  We think we know when we use them and they're often
fine amongst friends ... but do they belong in an accounting application
as accounting is, usually, formal in one sense or another and often used
for communicating to people outside of our immediate social circle.



The emoticon you gave is not an emoji, and is not standardized by the
Unicode Consortium. It seems a non-sequitor to this discussion.


Now *that* I find confusing.

Y'see, JohnR suggested every emoji had a single meaning, representation, 
etc OR that it wasn't anything to do with us if, say, someone 
represented someone badly in their own accounts.



or to put it another way, do we want to be the accounting program that
allowed someone to use a picture of a turd for the inland revenue and
then used that in their tax return :)



I think it is generally recommended that people use the output of GnuCash
as a source of data for filling out Inland Revenue forms, as GnuCash can't
generate tax forms itself. Besides, the mapping of personal accounting
accounts to the data needed on the forms isn't necessarily easy. It may be
important for your own accounting to have separate accounts for things
which go onto form SA103F, line 22 (Repairs and Maintenance of Properties
and Equipment), for instance.  So the fact that you keep track of the
maintenance of the portable toilets on your jobsite as "Expenses:
Cleanup" is immaterial; you aren't going to send that to HMRC.


I agree but are we dumbing down or not ?


[1] I accept, absolutely, that a nice smile face (I tend to stick to
text, myself) is pretty much universal these days; my argument is that
when you send me your emoji it doesn't necessarily appear the same to
both of us, mainly because there are a whole bunch of people owning [2]
these things.



In general, I'm not sending you my accounts. So what does it matter?


Someone generally gets to know about money being moved about unless 
you're one of those off radar americans and just keeping accounts for 
whoever decides to poison you and your family next.



Besides, the "whole bunch of people owning these things" quickly discovered
that the issue you bring up is a problem, and they got together to
standardize it to eliminate the problem. When you send an emoji to someone
else, they don't necessarily get the exact same rendering of the emoji that
you sent, but if you sent a "崙", they should get an emoji representing a
"woman with headscarf".


I was wondering about that because I'm not seeing "woman with headscarf".

JohnR said they should be the same for everyone but they aren't for me.

Do I need to belong to a club to see the same thing as other people when 
I receive "lady wearing long dress beating horse" or "man in top hat 
having gay sex with slave from 1980's reproduction of slave literature 
really cool in the southern US states now" ?



[2] since some emoji sets are proprietary, how does that fit in with gnc
as an open source accounting project ? <-- I'm not invoking Stallman
weirdness so much as practical stuff like: are we all seeing the same
thing?



The "people owning these things" turned control over them to the Unicode
Consortium, an international standards body.


Only up to a point, then they started doing it all themselves again. 
Well that's my reading



[4] did a dev look at that and think, "super idea, we *must* include
non-text chars in our text based xml file.  absolutely.  best idea ever
hashtag" or whatever the current parlance is.



More likely a dev said "If we are an international project, then we must
*absolutely* support internationalization 

Re: emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Eric Siegerman]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2018 at 07:31:38AM -0700, John Ralls wrote:
> > On Apr 6, 2018, at 11:11 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel 
> >  wrote:
> > gnc 3.0 allows emojis in places I think inappropriate
> > account names
> > account codes
> > securities

> Filtering for meaning is Way Too Hard. It would be too hard just in English, 
> every additional localization squares it.
> 
> Besides, if a user wants to have an emoji as (part of) an account name, isn’t 
> that the user’s business? It’s all Unicode, so from a text processing 
> standpoint no different from Chinese.

What @John says makes sense to me.  One can conceive of someone
coming up with an "SFW" subset of Unicode for a given locale
(assuming there's tooling to support Unicode subsets), and of GNC
honouring that subset if requested -- but devising it doesn't
seem like GNC's job.

However...

> > and offers them in places it shouldn't
> > e.g.
> > dates
> > numbers

Could you explain "offers" (as opposed to "allows")?  I've been
looking, and don't see them coming up in dropdown lists or the
like.  And when I try to type one directly into a numeric field
(e.g. Debit), it's ignored completely.  (That's in the register,
on Linux, though; Windows or Mac OS might be different, as might
different areas of GNC.)

If emojis were being offered and/or accepted in a numeric field,
though, shouldn't they be rejected as syntactically invalid?  In
this case, what they are is beside the point; it's what they
*aren't*, i.e. numeric, that matters.

  - Eric
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Re: emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Buddha Buck]

On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 2:12 AM Wm via gnucash-devel <
gnucash-devel@gnucash.org> wrote:

> background:
>
> gnc 3.0 allows emojis in places I think inappropriate
>
> e.g.
>
> account names
> account codes
> securities
>

I do not think it is GnuCash's place to dictate what is "appropriate" or
not for such fields. Account names and codes are, to the best of my
knowledge, specific to the user and can be whatever they want. Securities
may be used as lookups against external references, so securities with
emojis would not, I expect, work as lookups.


> and offers them in places it shouldn't
>
> e.g.
>
> dates
> numbers
>

I doubt that a date or a number with an emoji would parse correctly, so it
shouldn't, in practice, be a problem.

the thing I'm wondering about is if I am totally out of date or just
> being realistic.
>
> Argument A: emojis are everywhere, everyone knows what they are, they
> all mean the same thing, you're an old, out of date, fart, blah [3]


I wouldn't say you are "an old, out of date, far, blah". There are
perfectly good reasons why you might find emoji in these cases to be
inappropriate, and not use them. I personally can't think of a good reason
to use them. But GnuCash isn't saying you must use them, only thaty you may.


> Argument B: emojis are non standard, depend on platform, environment and

are by definition inconsistent and can't be reported on, used for tax
> purposes, used internationally or generally be used for significant
> financial communication [1]
>

I agree with some of this, disagree with other of this.

Emoji may very well be not suitable for financial communication, and might
be completely inappropriate for communication with the relevant
governmental organizations.

But they are standardized (by the Unicode Consortium), consistent, and are
used internationally. Their dependency on platform and environment is the
same as any character in a font -- certainly there are differences between "
I", "I", and "I", even though they are all semantically the same character
(a capital I).

As far as Unicode is concerned, while they are categorized differently, an
emoji like  is as much a valid character as Ѣ, and it is perfectly
reasonable to expect people who normally write the character Ѣ to want to
use it in their account names.

I also think there is something else (Trump supporters really should
> just leave the room now, it'll save you apoplexy).
>
> it would make more sense to me if, long term, gnc allowed other
> character sets (words have meaning) rather than trying to allow ill
> defined jumbles of high bit chars in plain text xml files [4]
>

Agreed. Ill-defined jumbles of high bit chars in XML files is bad.
Fortunately, UTF-8 and Unicode is not ill-defined.


> my suggestion is that words that are understandable to the user, their
> community in general, their tax and government authorities, etc are more
> useful than emojis
>

Perhaps, but I don't think it is GnuCash's place to dictate that.

Besides, until the time comes where I am audited, the government
authorities do not need to see what I keep in my personal books. Even then,
the IRS auditor may be slightly confused by my calling my Medicare
withholdings "Expense:Taxes:NHS" and my Federal withholdings
"Expenses:Taxes:Inland Revenue", but ultimately, she isn't going to care.
If she is a nerd of the classics, she might ask why I have "Expenses:☤"
instead of "Expenses:⚕", to which I'll answer "this is the US; the symbol
of the God of Commerce is more appropriate than the symbol of healing,
don't you think?".


> ===
>
> and from a personal POV I just don't like them and think their use
> inappropriate in a broad project like gnc that tries to be agnostic.
>

GNC does try to be agnostic. Adhering to a broad standard like Unicode is
*precisely* being agnostic. Catering to your personal POV is not agnostic.


> half for fun is this (.)(.) female breasts, an overweight man's chest or
> a pair of eyes ?  We think we know when we use them and they're often
> fine amongst friends ... but do they belong in an accounting application
> as accounting is, usually, formal in one sense or another and often used
> for communicating to people outside of our immediate social circle.
>

The emoticon you gave is not an emoji, and is not standardized by the
Unicode Consortium. It seems a non-sequitor to this discussion.


>
> or to put it another way, do we want to be the accounting program that
> allowed someone to use a picture of a turd for the inland revenue and
> then used that in their tax return :)
>

I think it is generally recommended that people use the output of GnuCash
as a source of data for filling out Inland Revenue forms, as GnuCash can't
generate tax forms itself. Besides, the mapping of personal accounting
accounts to the data needed on the forms isn't necessarily easy. It may be
important for your own accounting to have separate accounts for things
which go onto form SA103F, line 22 (Repairs and Maintenance of 

Re: emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 6, 2018, at 11:11 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel  
> wrote:
> 
> background:
> 
> gnc 3.0 allows emojis in places I think inappropriate
> 
> e.g.
> 
> account names
> account codes
> securities
> 
> and offers them in places it shouldn't
> 
> e.g.
> 
> dates
> numbers
> 
> ===
> 
> the thing I'm wondering about is if I am totally out of date or just being 
> realistic.
> 
> Argument A: emojis are everywhere, everyone knows what they are, they all 
> mean the same thing, you're an old, out of date, fart, blah [3]
> 
> Argument B: emojis are non standard, depend on platform, environment and are 
> by definition inconsistent and can't be reported on, used for tax purposes, 
> used internationally or generally be used for significant financial 
> communication [1]
> 
> 
> ===
> 
> I also think there is something else (Trump supporters really should just 
> leave the room now, it'll save you apoplexy).
> 
> it would make more sense to me if, long term, gnc allowed other character 
> sets (words have meaning) rather than trying to allow ill defined jumbles of 
> high bit chars in plain text xml files [4]
> 
> my suggestion is that words that are understandable to the user, their 
> community in general, their tax and government authorities, etc are more 
> useful than emojis
> 
> ===
> 
> and from a personal POV I just don't like them and think their use 
> inappropriate in a broad project like gnc that tries to be agnostic.
> 
> ===
> 
> half for fun is this (.)(.) female breasts, an overweight man's chest or a 
> pair of eyes ?  We think we know when we use them and they're often fine 
> amongst friends ... but do they belong in an accounting application as 
> accounting is, usually, formal in one sense or another and often used for 
> communicating to people outside of our immediate social circle.
> 
> or to put it another way, do we want to be the accounting program that 
> allowed someone to use a picture of a turd for the inland revenue and then 
> used that in their tax return :)
> 
> ===
> 
> [1] I accept, absolutely, that a nice smile face (I tend to stick to text, 
> myself) is pretty much universal these days; my argument is that when you 
> send me your emoji it doesn't necessarily appear the same to both of us, 
> mainly because there are a whole bunch of people owning [2] these things.
> 
> [2] since some emoji sets are proprietary, how does that fit in with gnc as 
> an open source accounting project ? <-- I'm not invoking Stallman weirdness 
> so much as practical stuff like: are we all seeing the same thing?
> 
> [3] return *fun* insults by e-mail please otherwise you'll get put on the 
> international wait-a-bit time zone dysfunctional list too :)
> 
> [4] did a dev look at that and think, "super idea, we *must* include non-text 
> chars in our text based xml file.  absolutely.  best idea ever hashtag" or 
> whatever the current parlance is.

Filtering for meaning is Way Too Hard. It would be too hard just in English, 
every additional localization squares it.

Besides, if a user wants to have an emoji as (part of) an account name, isn’t 
that the user’s business? It’s all Unicode, so from a text processing 
standpoint no different from Chinese.

Regards,
John Ralls

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emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Wm via gnucash-devel]

background:

gnc 3.0 allows emojis in places I think inappropriate

e.g.

account names
account codes
securities

and offers them in places it shouldn't

e.g.

dates
numbers

===

the thing I'm wondering about is if I am totally out of date or just 
being realistic.


Argument A: emojis are everywhere, everyone knows what they are, they 
all mean the same thing, you're an old, out of date, fart, blah [3]


Argument B: emojis are non standard, depend on platform, environment and 
are by definition inconsistent and can't be reported on, used for tax 
purposes, used internationally or generally be used for significant 
financial communication [1]



===

I also think there is something else (Trump supporters really should 
just leave the room now, it'll save you apoplexy).


it would make more sense to me if, long term, gnc allowed other 
character sets (words have meaning) rather than trying to allow ill 
defined jumbles of high bit chars in plain text xml files [4]


my suggestion is that words that are understandable to the user, their 
community in general, their tax and government authorities, etc are more 
useful than emojis


===

and from a personal POV I just don't like them and think their use 
inappropriate in a broad project like gnc that tries to be agnostic.


===

half for fun is this (.)(.) female breasts, an overweight man's chest or 
a pair of eyes ?  We think we know when we use them and they're often 
fine amongst friends ... but do they belong in an accounting application 
as accounting is, usually, formal in one sense or another and often used 
for communicating to people outside of our immediate social circle.


or to put it another way, do we want to be the accounting program that 
allowed someone to use a picture of a turd for the inland revenue and 
then used that in their tax return :)


===

[1] I accept, absolutely, that a nice smile face (I tend to stick to 
text, myself) is pretty much universal these days; my argument is that 
when you send me your emoji it doesn't necessarily appear the same to 
both of us, mainly because there are a whole bunch of people owning [2] 
these things.


[2] since some emoji sets are proprietary, how does that fit in with gnc 
as an open source accounting project ? <-- I'm not invoking Stallman 
weirdness so much as practical stuff like: are we all seeing the same thing?


[3] return *fun* insults by e-mail please otherwise you'll get put on 
the international wait-a-bit time zone dysfunctional list too :)


[4] did a dev look at that and think, "super idea, we *must* include 
non-text chars in our text based xml file.  absolutely.  best idea ever 
hashtag" or whatever the current parlance is.


--
Wm

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