> 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
