On Mar 4, 2011, at 1:33 AM, Smylers wrote:
All this for no reason: Outlook could simply use the Unicode '☺',
which
does the right thing regardless of font.
Or, if the user simply typed the three Ascii characters ':-)' in the
first place, Outlook could perhaps DO NOTHING AT ALL WITH THEM,
BECAUSE
IT ISN'T A COINCIDENCE THAT THEY CAN BE TRANSMITTED LIKE THAT IN PLAIN
TEXT. Managing to break the transmission of three printable Ascii
characters is actually quite a feat.
iChat does the same thing -- it forcibly converts strings of innocent
ASCII characters into smiley images. I quickly learned to write "(a)"
and "(b)" instead of "(A)" and "(B)", because "B)" got helpfully[1]
replaced by a smiley face wearing shades.
And guess what happens if you copy text from the iChat window and
paste into a text window? Does it gracefully degrade[2] the graphics
back into their original text form? No, of course not. It strips
them out completely, so what in context was a lighthearted remark now
makes you look like a heartless prick.
When did deliberate data loss become fashionable?
Josh
[1] Read: hatefully.
[2] Arguably, it's the reverse transform that's degrading, since (for
example) ":)" and ":-)" map to the same image.
