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: Windows 10 release (is still: Re: WORD JOINER vs ZWNBSP)
On Wed, 29 Jul 2015 10:10:02 +0200 (CEST) Marcel Schneider charupd...@orange.fr wrote: On 02 Jul 2015, at 12:22, I replied: However, I believe that WJs being a part of plain text, they should be properly supported on all text handling applications. And they should be on the keyboard. The solution I suggest is therefore to have the word joiner (and the sequences containing it) on Ctrl+Alt or Kana, and the zero width no-break space on Shift+Ctrl+Alt or Shift+Kana, so that users working efficently on good software may access the preferred character a bit easier than users who must use the deprecated character because their word processor does not properly support the preferred one. Unfortunately that doesnʼt work on at least one recent version of Windows. An unambigous bug was due to the presence of 0x2060 in the Ligatures table. This has cost me a whole workday to retrieve, fix, and verify. The effect of the bug was that Word, Excel, Firefox and Zotero were unstartable. As a result, the WORD JOINER cannot be implemented on a driver based keyboard layout for general use on Windows. By contrast, the ZWNBSP can. Your lament is a bit vague - I'm not sure what U+2060 is doing in a 'ligature table'. I can say that a Windows keyboard mapping that maps AltGr-M to WJ which was created using MSKLC on Windows 7 in April 2011 still works. Richard.
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
Windows 10 release (is still: Re: WORD JOINER vs ZWNBSP)
On 02 Jul 2015, at 12:22, I replied: However, I believe that WJs being a part of plain text, they should be properly supported on all text handling applications. And they should be on the keyboard. The solution I suggest is therefore to have the word joiner (and the sequences containing it) on Ctrl+Alt or Kana, and the zero width no-break space on Shift+Ctrl+Alt or Shift+Kana, so that users working efficently on good software may access the preferred character a bit easier than users who must use the deprecated character because their word processor does not properly support the preferred one. Unfortunately that doesnʼt work on at least one recent version of Windows. An unambigous bug was due to the presence of 0x2060 in the Ligatures table. This has cost me a whole workday to retrieve, fix, and verify. The effect of the bug was that Word, Excel, Firefox and Zotero were unstartable. As a result, the WORD JOINER cannot be implemented on a driver based keyboard layout for general use on Windows. By contrast, the ZWNBSP can. Consequently we hope that such kind of bugs are being fixed on Windows 10, that is to be released today. If everybody using Windows 7 or 8 is being updated for free, Windows 10 will become the standard and we will be able to build upon. It needs to be underscored that this kind of keyboard driver related bugs is normally impossible when using Keyman. I don’t see any way for the OS to detect the presence of 0x2060 in a ligatures table in order to block the full execution of the system, when this character is a part of some keyboard layout software that is fully managed and executed by an additional framework like Keyman. Under the actual overall circumstances, and for ease and flexibility of development and use, Keyman appears to me as an indispensable software for thorough and complete Unicode implementations. Best regards, Marcel Schneider
Re: Revenge of pIqaD
Dear Mark and Chris, I wonder if copyright or other IP issues might hinder the suitability of encoding Klingon, similar to the Tolkien scripts? And to be sure, Klingon certainly does have a larger digital presence than the Gondi scripts... All the best, Anshu On Jul 28, 2015, at 10:21 PM, Mark Shoulson m...@kli.org wrote: OK! I'm freshly back from the qep'a' cha'maH cha'DIch in Chicago, and I have to report that Klingon pIqaD really is out there and getting some use, despite having been banished to the PUA. I've seen it on a wine-bottle label (commercially produced, not someone's homebrew), on the Klingon version of the Monopoly game, a book or two (NOT published by the KLI); there are websites using it (but then there were last time I mentioned this and that didn't seem to count then), and apparently support for it on several platforms, including a smartphone keypad, to say nothing of quite a few T-shirts. Apparently there is a small community actually using pIqaD to (*gasp*) exchange information via SMS. I'm copying Chris Lipscombe on this email; he is better plugged in to the use of pIqaD in Real Life™ (don't forget to Reply All if you want to include him, since I think he isn't on the list at the moment). What has to be done to get this encoded? The proposal is likely still more or less what we need, and it probably has at least as much online information interchange as, say, Gondi does (Well, what do you expect, Gondi isn't encoded yet! Neither is pIqaD.) Are we ready to revisit this question again? ~mark
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
