back to article Unicode wonks are bringing home the BACON, as an emoji

Want a bacon, avocado and cucumber salad? Next year, you'll be able to order it with emoji. In among the po-faced work of setting standards, the Unicode Consortium is considering adding those three emoji to the character set – along with pregnancy, crossed fingers, a nauseated face, a clown and a cowboy, and a bunch of others …

  1. Robert Helpmann??
    Childcatcher

    In a Pickle

    Cucumber, they note, “could also be used to represent a pickle”; El Reg will refrain from expanding on that suggestion to any greater degree.

    No, but you went there, didn't you? Yes, you did.

    8€

    1. Deltics
      Pint

      Re: In a Pickle

      I thought Unicode was about characters, not glyphs.

      An "f" (MUSICAL SYMBOL FORTE) does look a lot like an "f" (LATIN SMALL LETTER f WITH HOOK) and both have more than a passing resemblance to the "f" (LATIN SMALL LETTER f), but they are all unique CHARACTERS even though the GLYPHS for these may be indistinguishable from each other, depending on font, styling etc.

      But now the wonks themselves say go ahead and use a cucumber when you mean pickle ?

      Is Unicode finally running out of code points that they need to start desperately pursuing re-use over clarity of expression ? What is the world come to ?

      1. MacroRodent
        Facepalm

        Re: In a Pickle

        An "f" (MUSICAL SYMBOL FORTE) does look a lot like an "f" (LATIN SMALL LETTER f WITH HOOK) and both have more than a passing resemblance to the "f" (LATIN SMALL LETTER f), but they are all unique CHARACTERS even though the GLYPHS for these may be indistinguishable from each other, depending on font, styling etc.

        Not to mention that there is a separate code point for "å" (a-ring) and the symbol for the ångström unit, although these are really the same character originally. All of which makes Unicode the Phishermans Friend. Ironically, originally Unicode tried to cram all the code points to 16 bits by "unifying" Asian letters that look the same. It is incomprehensible that "å" the letter and "å" the unit name, and many similar cases were not unified.

      2. DN4
        FAIL

        Re: In a Pickle

        > Is Unicode finally running out of code points that they need to start desperately pursuing re-use over clarity of expression?

        Maybe just saving space for useful things...

        Considering the development from :-) to these emoji things, they will be superseded again in a few years by something else, probably animated and making sounds or whatever -- and hopefully falling out of the Unicode domain.

        And considering clarity of expression, if Apple shows ‚envelope with downwards arrow above‘ as ‚envelope with rightwards arrow at left‘, it does not get much clearer than that, does it?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Flame Bait

    The Unicode Consortium may have a wonderful set of criteria for inclusion of particular emojis to the list, but that won't save them from a lot of acerbic carping. And don't get me started!

  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Stop

    I would rather learn Gaelic

    than consider using an emoji.

    It's taken less than six thousand years to go from not writing at all, through pictograms, to alphabetic literature, and back to pictograms. Fight back before it's too late.

    1. PleebSmash
      Trollface

      Re: I would rather learn Gaelic

      ⚣🍀⚢

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RTOFL?

    Huh?

    1. choleric

      Re: RTOFL?

      That's funny. ROTFL!

    2. frank ly

      Re: RTOFL?

      Read The Original F****** Literature ?

  5. stucs201

    Want a bacon, avocado and cucumber salad?

    Yes please, but leave out the avocado and cucumber and salad.

  6. Gordon 11

    cue men's rights activists howling “why can't we have a pregnant man?.

    More likely women calling for a "Woman in Tuxedo" to go with Mother Christmas.

    1. Christoph

      ob Python:

      Stan: I want to have babies.

      Reg: You want to have babies?!?!

      Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.

      Reg: But ... you can't HAVE babies!

      Stan: Don't you oppress me!

      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        "I want to be called Loretta"

        I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?

        1. MacroRodent

          Re: "I want to be called Loretta"

          Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?

          Schwarzenegger and DeVito had a solution in "Junior" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110216/ ). Probably the strangest Schwarzenegger film ever...

  7. Archaon
    Thumb Up

    Proof...

    Everything is better with bacon. Even emojis.

  8. MJI Silver badge

    What are they used for?

    They seem like a load of bollox to me.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: What are they used for?

      ...and of course they work really well when the sender has a different set installed compared to the recipient (or not installed at all). Or a different program which interprets the codes differently. Or some hipster downloads the latest "new" set and gets a virus from the "free" download.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmmm

    Don't tell the religious types - or there will be uproar and they'll have to roll their own 'clean' Unicode without the pig products :)

  10. The Vociferous Time Waster

    1F926

    1F926 (Facepalm) will get a lot of use in our office.

  11. Rob Gr

    To my mind its sad that Unicode has allowed itself to be polluted with this rubbish.

    I wasn't in favour of Dingbats either.

    A character database should be used for characters in written languages, not this kind of fluff. If they carry on, soon 2^32 characters will be insufficient.

  12. Sykobee

    And yet there aren't (as far as I can see) unicode symbols for tally counting (as individual symbols, 1 to 5). They recommend using ||||/ :/

    I bet they have the chinese tally symbols though.

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