Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Monday August 24 2015, @06:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the x1F4A9 dept.

The candidate list for Unicode 9 is taking shape, with the final list of new emojis scheduled for approval in mid-2016.

38 emoji characters have been accepted as candidates for the 2016 Unicode update, including Face Palm, Selfie, Shrug, Fingers Crossed, and Pregnant Woman.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MrNemesis on Tuesday August 25 2015, @01:21PM

    by MrNemesis (1582) on Tuesday August 25 2015, @01:21PM (#227570)

    Age-old debate about CLI vs. GUI; GUI is more discoverable but CLI is great for better communicating info. Lots of people complain that linux/BSD/windows is too hard because "I asked for help with XYZ and they said do this gobbledeygook in something called a terminator that looks like the kind of thing haxX0rz use"... but it's much easier to communicate with cutting and pasting `doohickey frob WossName --config=~/.oojmaflip` than it is to say "OK, look for the hamburger... no, the other left... yeah, the one without sesame seeds... now spin the rehooglinator thrice widdershins and do a two-and-a-half-finger swipe from the chirping frog... no, the PURPLE chirping frog! What do you mean what purple? Are you colourblind?!". Part of why I've always preferred GUIs that have a CLI-backing (or equivalent batch file/scriptability - running a .reg file as opposed to instructing the user to footle about in regedit.exe for example) - the disambiguity makes the whole thing much less error-prone.

    But... text is "difficult" (read: time consuming/expensive) to get right since it requires people well versed in the language, localisation (or is that localization?) and may not even be directly translatable into any given language. We've already seen this behaviour run rampant in the last decade of "appified" UI-design; instead of icon and text or just text we get some ginormous blob of an icon which may or may not serve as a visual metaphor; if you're lucky you may still get a tooltip. Examples include what I'm told is now called the "hamburger menu" alluded to above which is apparently the new standard for what used to be called "settings" or "preferences" and looks like three horizontal lines on top of one another. How it's meant to resemble a hamburger or settings (or why I should immediately think "hamburger" when I want to change something) I don't know but they're becoming ubiquitous. If you have a strong stomach I might suggest checking out some of GNOME's new, uh, UI paradigms.

    I can't help but think of a passage from Stephenson's The Diamond Age where Nell is operating the matter compiler; the whole machine was operated by glyphs rather than text. A big part of her interaction with the Primer is learning how to communicate using actual letters and words so as to think of and express concepts that don't have a "mediaglyph" drawn for them. Reducing the commonly available vocabulary is always a concept I find worrying (cue Orwell quote).

    I'm not sure I'd go so far as calling it the collapse of civilisation but globalisation has certainly pushed back on having text-based interfaces and the all-encompassing morass of UI dumbification/disasters/"improvements" certainly leaves me cold. But I'm wondering if the previous generation felt the same way when all us kids started putting :^) at the end of our new-fangled texts and emails.

    "It's not the end of the world... but you can see it from here".

    --
    "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3