Re: New Public Review on QID emoji

[Asmus Freytag via Unicode]

On 11/9/2019 3:18 PM, Peter Constable via Unicode wrote: Neither Unicode Inc. or ISO/IEC 10646 would _implement_ QID emoji. Unicode would provide a specification for QID emoji that software vendors could implement, while ISO/IEC 10646 would not define that specification. As Ken mentions, there are already many emoji in use inter-operably based on specifications provided by Unicode but not by ISO/IEC 10646. One of the bigger issues I have with this proposal is that it is a specification that "vendors _could_ implement". Let's not argue why that might technically apply to other specifications; in this case it underscores the fact that it is not the vendors that are asking for this, but instead, the motivation appears to be the Unicode Consortium's interest to not be seen as "arbiters" of new emoji. While I have a certain understanding for the underlying concerns, it still is the case that this proposal promises to be a bad example of "leading standardization": throwing out a spec in the hopes it may be taken up and take off, instead of something that meets an expressed need of the stakeholders and that they are eagerly awaiting. The stakeholders in this case are not limited to the vendors. They include the users as well. Having a negotiated set of emoji, implies, on the one hand, a limitation. But on the other hand it allows the necessary standardization of the set; such that users can be comfortable in the expectation that there is wide agreement in the set of supported emoji, so that they are safe to use in interchange across platforms. While there is considerable latitude in representation, some emoji are beginning to be used idiomatically, where they are not standing for the formally adopted meaning, but often for something that is only implied (or hinted at by common choice for the particular depiction of an unrelated concept). Having a central clearinghouse provides a platform that allows some push for commonality in depiction, particularly in instances where it matters for idiomatic and other common uses. From the idiomatic use that certain emoji have acquired, it follows that a simple "semantic" identification is a solution in search of a problem: being able to, in principle, differentiate between aubergine and eggplant isn't of interest, given the way the eggplant emoji is commonly used. Being able to identify a specific semantic to something some vendor puts up on a keyboard, is also not as interesting as the association that one can expect the recipient will make with the displayed shape. And finally, the less likely it will be that some carefully selected emoji will be received as such by its intended recipient the less valuable it will be to the user. Much of the strong interest in pushing for the adoption of particular emoji is derived from the feeling of validation of having a representative depiction or representative object admitted to the 'canon'. Stakeholders for which that is important aren't going to respond as well to a non-committal, free-f0r-all approach. While QID is a fancy label, de-facto these would be "private-use" characters: on any given platform, some set of QID emoji may be defined on the keyboard/palette and as a users, I may be assured that inserting them for platform internal use will work. The platform vendor may gain the benefit of being able to use an "in-stream" encoding, but if they already supported private emoji, they will have a legacy scheme for them that they may or may not be able to abandon. For cross-platform use or cut&paste all bets are off: the chances that out of millions of QIDs two vendors will support the same one (even for overlapping concepts) is going to be rather small. Lacking central endorsement, the extensions for different vendors can be expected to drift apart to the point where QID become useless for wider interchange. But what if there were a consortium of vendors, you say, who could coordinate these efforts? Well, gee, I could think of a very successful consortium of vendors . . . As for the underlying motivation of getting out of the emoji business, I would say that emoji business has had some not inconsiderable positive side effects. While much of Unicode's work on natural scripts has been focused on writing systems without a large contemporary user base, emoji have represented a high-interest, common-use, and high-visibility subset - and have probably done more than any other set in making sure that vendors have processes in place to quickly migrate to the latest version of the Unicode Standard (and the latest version of the properties). Absent the pressure of such high-value newly encoded characters, what would prompt vendors to keep up? Why not wait for the next currency symbol, or Japanese emperor, instead, and until then, make do with what we have? My conclusion is that this proposal is misguided in many ways that are independent of all the issues surrounding the QIDs themselves. Those are not without issues of their own. There appears to be no minimal semantic distance between two QID, while emoji so far have covered the semantic space rather sparsely; it may be counterintuitive, but this limitation may have worked to the advantage of emoji as an expressive medium. With meanings often somewhat approximate, the leap to idiomatic usage is facilitated. Instead of a flower emoji, each vendor might decide to implement QID for very specific species or even varieties. They are unlikely to cover all, but very likely to pick different ones. That, then, finally undermines Unicode's implied guarantee as being the medium for unambiguous interchange. Giving up that guarantee seems a bad bargain. A./