Re:Redesigning Android Emoji – Google Design
by tomkarlo on Thursday May 18, 2017 @06:35PM
(#14371645)
Regardless of what platform you're on, you want your emoji to be similar enough to those of other platforms so that intent and meaning are transmitted accurately. This is one of the problems with emoji overall - they specify very approximately what visual each keycode should correspond to, which means that you could have two valid implementations that result in very confusing / inaccurate communication between users on each platform, since they're sending one thing and the other side is seeing something quite different.
Re:Redesigning Android Emoji – Google Design
by makecheck on Thursday May 18, 2017 @06:44PM
(#14371697)
That is not a problem unique to Emojis though. Some people construct multi-symbol things that would make a screen-reader call them what they are instead of what they "mean". Take for example the shrugging man made up of slashes, with a Japanese hiragana right in the middle of it!
It is a fundamentally wrong assumption that Unicode made: they thought if a code existed for everything, people would always use the code they are supposed to use. In reality, people seem more likely to choose symbols based on what each symbol looks like, and make their own composed "words". You practically need machine learning to correctly decipher what each string of symbols really "means".
But I really don't understand replacing the blobs with yet another boring variation of Apple emojis, like Twitter, FB, Samsung, ... I'm also a big fan and I believe it's a unique feature that makes Android stand out (even before KitKat, the green droids were pretty fun). I always found Android apps that embed Apple emojis infuriating, but now everyone will get ugly emojis, I guess it solves the problem.