Personally, I love this idea, and would like to claim first authorship ๐. Hereโs a snippet from the email I sent to my old colleagues at Apple back on April 15th (not the 1st):
> Hi, Apple iOS/Keyboard/Design//I18n folks, > > Just wanted to say, nice work on the new Emoji keyboard design and expanded > repertoire. I desperately wish the skin tone modifiers would work on the > beer emoji, however. Need my porter and stout. Maybe next update? For > old times' sake? ๐ . > -steve > On Sep 1, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Doug Ewell <[email protected]> wrote: > > Document L2/15-211, "Letter in support of dark beer emoji" > <http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15221-cerveza-indio-letter.pdf>, is a > request submitted by Cuauhtรฉmoc Moctezuma, a Mexican brewery. > > The letter refers to a petition with more than 22,000 signatures > supporting such an emoji, and may have at least some commercial > motivation ("We want the dark beer to be part of peoples > conversations"). > > As an alternative to this proposal that may provide more flexibility, I > propose adapting the Fitzpatrick skin-tone modifiers from U+1F3FB to > U+1F3FF to be valid for use following U+1F37A BEER MUG or U+1F37B > CLINKING BEER MUGS. > > This could be done by establishing a normative correlation between the > Fitzpatrick scale and the Standard Reference Method (SRM), Lovibond, > and/or European Brewery Convention (EBC) beer color scales > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_style#Appearance>. > > This mechanism would allow the entire spectrum of beer styles to be > depicted, instead of dividing beers arbitrarily into "light" and "dark," > in the same way (and for the same reason) that Unicode already supports > a variety of skin tones. > > For example, a Budweiser or similar lager could be represented as > ๐บ๐ป <1F37A, 1F3FB>, while a Newcastle Brown Ale might be ๐บ๐ฝ > <1F37A, 1F3FD>. U+1F3FF could denote imperial stout or Baltic porter. > There might be a need to encode an additional "Type 0" color modifier to > extend the "light" end of the scale, such as for non-alcoholic brews, or > for Coors Light. > > U+1F37B could be used to denote two beers of the same style, but for > beers of different colors, the mechanism described in UTR #51, Section > 2.2.1 ("Multi-Person Groupings"), involving ZWJ, could be utilized. So a > toast between drinkers of the two beers above could be encoded as > ๐บ๐ปโ๐บ๐ฝ <1F37A, 1F3FB, 200D, 1F37A, 1F3FD>. Longer sequences > would also be possible, such as for beer samplers offered in some pubs > and restaurants. > > I have no idea whether my proposal is more or less serious, or more or > less likely to be adopted, than the original. > > -- > Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO ๐บ๐ธ > >
