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posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-did-we-communicate-before-the-brocolli-emoji? dept.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/12/new-emojis-to-include-breastfeeding-a-hijab-and-the-lotus-position

The consortium that approves emojis has signed off on 56 new ones, including a woman breastfeeding a baby, a woman wearing a hijab and a "gender-inclusive" child, adult and older adult.

Among the other emoji that will be released in 2017 by Unicode are a face vomiting, a head exploding and a man and woman practising yoga. A flying saucer, vampire and T-rex also made the cut, as did a sandwich, broccoli and a pair of socks.

Unicode 10.0 will also include 285 hentaigana (obsolete/historical variants of Japanese hiragana) and 3 additional Zanabazar Square characters.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Google CEO Drops Everything to Fix Cheeseburger Emoji 47 comments

The cheese on Google's version of the cheeseburger emoji is in the WRONG PLACE and that is problematic:

Responding to criticism about the placement of cheese on Google's version of the cheeseburger emoji, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that he would take a look at the issue immediately. "Will drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday :) if folks can agree on the correct way to do this!" Pichai tweeted.

Pichai was responding to author Thomas Baekdal, who pointed out the difference in cheese placement between Apple's and Google's cheeseburger emojis. "I think we need to have a discussion about how Google's burger emoji is placing the cheese underneath the burger, which Apple puts on top," Baekdal tweeted.

The tweet ignited a debate about where the different ingredients of a cheeseburger belong. Among all the different cheeseburger emoji variants offered by various tech companies, Google's is the only version to place the cheese below the meat, according to images of cheeseburger emojis from Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook and others, as seen on Emojipedia. It's generally accepted that cheeseburger cheese should be placed directly on the meat patty for optimal melting.

🍔🍕🍖🍗🍟🍩 🏃💨 🇺🇸 💩🚽

Unicode 11 emoji candidates, scheduled for June 2018.

Also at Brisbane Times and New Zealand Herald.

Previously: Tweet Emoji 4 Pizza: #Epitome of #Convenience
38 New Emojis to be Introduced in 2016
Unicode Considering 67 New Emoji for 2016
Unicode 9.0 Serves up Bacon Emoji, 71 others, and Six New Scripts
Apple Urged to Rethink Gun Emoji Change
Unicode 10.0's New Emojis
Apple's New iPhone X will let You Control the Poo Emoji with Your Face


Original Submission

Unicode Consortium Adding 230 New Emojis in Emoji 12.0 64 comments

Emoji 12.0 brings us waffles, more diversity, suggestive "finger pinch" glyph

There's a push for more diversity with this new emoji release. We have emojis for deaf people in three genders (male, female, and genderless) and five skin tones, an ear with a hearing aid, people in motorized and unmotorized wheelchairs, prosthetic arms and legs, a guide dog and a service dog, and people with a probing cane. There are actually only 59 distinct new emoji types in this release, but everything that depicts a human comes in five skin tones and three genders, which pumps up the numbers. You can really see this with the "People holding hands" emoji, which is completely configurable for a total of 70 possible combinations.

The emoji that's causing the most buzz is "pinching hand." Emojipedia's example shows a thumb and pointer finger with a small distance between them, which could also be interpreted as a hand signal for "small." People are already coming up with, uh, "suggestive" uses for such a glyph, and if the actual implementations follow Emojipedia's design, the glyph could end up on the naughty list next to peach and eggplant.

Thank you, Emojesus. ✝

By the way, what happened to calling it Unicode 12.0? Maybe they'll call it that in June.

Unicode Consortium blog post. Also at Emojipedia and 9to5Mac.

Previously: 38 New Emojis to be Introduced in 2016
Unicode Considering 67 New Emoji for 2016
Unicode 9.0 Serves up Bacon Emoji, 71 others, and Six New Scripts
Unicode 10.0's New Emojis
Stink Over Frowning Poo Emoji at the Unicode Consortium

Related: Apple's New iPhone X will let You Control the Poo Emoji with Your Face
Google CEO Drops Everything to Fix Cheeseburger Emoji
Microsoft Briefly Left Holding the Gun Emoji
Battle of the Bagel Emoji


Original Submission

Google Unveils 53 Gender Fluid Emoji 195 comments

Exclusive: Google releases 53 gender fluid emoji

[As emojis] become more inclusive, each becomes less universal. Jennifer Daniel, designer at Google, thinks about this deep irony at the heart of visual language all the time. She traces it back to the age-old problem with the male bathroom symbol. "That person could be man, woman, anyone," she says. "But they had to add a little detail, that dress, and suddenly that person symbol doesn't mean person anymore; it means man. And that culture means a man-centered culture."

While Daniel can't fix our bathroom signage, as the director of Android emojis, she can fix another problem: The lack of gender-neutral symbols in texting. She can give us the zombies, merpeople, children, weightlifters that are neither male nor female. "We're not calling this the non-binary character, the third gender, or an asexual emoji–and not gender neutral. Gender neutral is what you call pants," says Daniel. "But you can create something that feels more inclusive."

Google is launching 53 updated, gender ambiguous emoji as part of a beta release for Pixel smartphones this week (they'll come to all Android Q phones later this year). Whether Google calls them "non-binary" or not, they have been designed to live between the existing male and female emoji and recognize gender as a spectrum. Given that Google collaborates with many of its rivals on emoji, it's likely that Apple and others will release their takes on genderless emoji later this year.

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  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:09AM

    by shortscreen (2252) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:09AM (#427373) Journal

    How long before unicode collapses under the weight of its scope-creep and we have to start all over again?

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:24AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:24AM (#427378)

      Too late.

      Wouldn't it be simpler to just have a standard for applying colors to pixels in a grid of specified size? I'm sure someone could even come up with a compression algorithm for it.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:56AM

        by dyingtolive (952) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:56AM (#427386)
        --
        Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:35PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:35PM (#427542)

          whooshed

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:52PM (#427726)

            It's only "whoosh" when it's actually funny. You can't type something inane and then claim "whoosh."

          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:02PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:02PM (#427734) Journal

            Is there already an Emoji for "whoosh"?

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:58AM

        by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:58AM (#427387)

        We need resolution independent graphics now so we're talking about vectors

        • (Score: 1) by ewk on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:20AM

          by ewk (5923) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:20AM (#427442)

          The 80's are calling... they want their PostScript back :-)

          --
          I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:37PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:37PM (#427546)

            DVI, baby! It was perfect in the 80's, and it is just as perfect now. Come out of the Microsoft Dark Ages and return to sanity.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:39AM (#427398)

      Never? It’s not like every font will implement all of these emoji. Or more like only specifically made fonts will care about this. Everyone else will continue as before. ZWJ abuse should stop, though.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:48AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:48AM (#427414) Journal

      Well, maybe that would be a good idea. It would also be a chance to undo the very few errors done by the early Unicode versions.

      Basically I think there are two: One is the UTF16 encoding, due to the fact that originally they thought 16 bits should be enough, and then having to extend it to more bits; starting over with more bits from the beginning should allow a better UTF16 replacement, and the second is that they decided that combining characters *follow* the base character instead of preceding it. After avoiding to require lookahead in the code point encoding (you can decide if your code point is finished without reading the code unit following the code point), they reintroduced it in the glyph composition (you don't know if your glyph is finished until you've read the first code point belonging to the next glyph, to see that it isn't yet another combining character).

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:09PM

      by pTamok (3042) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:09PM (#427508)

      Be careful what you wish for: https://m.xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:02PM (#427526)

      Indeed nothing advocates coping with squares and little numbers in them more than getting "breastfeeding mom" and "gender inclusive kid" in your forum replies.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:42PM (#427550)

        I'm partial to: FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH VOMITING

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:00AM (#427389)

    Kids these days with their emojis... In my day, we had to make do with spare colons and parentheses and they worked just fine. Sure we had to tilt our head 90 degrees to read them, but was just the way things were back then, and that's how we liked it.

    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:16AM

      by isostatic (365) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:16AM (#427423) Journal

      Spare?! We had to craft those colons out of raw 1s and 0s, reusing the bits from incoming spams.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:47AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:47AM (#427458)

        You had spams to reuse? Luxury! In my time we had to create our 0s and 1s ourself from nothing but stone!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:41AM (#427400)

    So now individual characters may be censored.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:54AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:54AM (#427460)

      Eh?
      Look on the bright side. Now we have an emoji for a terrorist --> 1F9D5

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:08AM

    by pTamok (3042) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:08AM (#427419)

    It is difficult for Unicode to be taken seriously by some people when Emojis are included, but well-known synthetic alphabets are not, such as Tolkein's Tengwar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengwar [wikipedia.org] ) and Cirth ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth [wikipedia.org] ); and Star Trek's Klingon ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_alphabets [wikipedia.org] ), especially when other alphabets like Deseret ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_alphabet [wikipedia.org] )and Shavian ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet [wikipedia.org] ) are included.

    Now, I know that there is a private use code area in Unicode, and there is an unofficial effort to codify which alphabets use which codes in that area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConScript_Unicode_Registry [wikipedia.org]

    Klingon has been rejected, but Tengwar and Cirth are in the roadmap for official inclusion in Unicode - but have been since 1997! I wonder if they will get in before the 20th anniversary of the first submission?

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:16AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:16AM (#427424)

      The problem is that only sweaty nerds want Tengwar, Cirth, and Klingon, while Apple, Google, Microsoft et al. want emoji, and are getting them in there annually (check the revision history).

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:49AM

        by RamiK (1813) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:49AM (#427459)

        The emoticons \ emojis go back to the 70s and the Wang word-processing machines [wikipedia.org] via CP437 [wikipedia.org].

        --
        compiling...
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:55PM (#427728)

          Emoticons and emojis are not the same thing.

          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:03PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:03PM (#427736) Journal

            So what, the backslash is "setminus", so it's "emoticons without emojis". ;-)

            (I wonder why in the latest time so many people use a backslash where a slash would belong.)

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 1) by J_Darnley on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:33PM

        by J_Darnley (5679) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:33PM (#427852)

        And who are the users that wanted the deseret and shavian symbols mentioned if not sweaty language nerds?

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:30AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:30AM (#427427) Homepage

    >From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    >Not to be confused with Hentai.

    Thank you Wikipedia, wouldn't want to confuse those two; that would be embarrassing for the Consortium.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:32AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:32AM (#427466)

      It very helpfully provided you with the link to the Hentai entry though.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:27PM (#427541)

    When a committee has out-lived its useful lifespan. [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:48PM (#427602)

    I'll fully admit I'm not in the target market, but do people actually use all these emoji? The basic smiley faces on text messages and IMs are fairly common, and I'll go so far as to grant that they "should" exist.

    Besides them, though, I'll see 0-1 emojis on a daily basis... and certainly not to the extent that the world is clamoring for more. Do others actually see them being used in the wild by normal people?

    I'm curious why is the consortium busy adding more and more of them. From my limited perspective, it feels a bit like an obsolete department in a company busy with make-work to try to justify their existence (such as a the stable-masters at a modern taxi company announcing how buggy whips will now be maroon instead of black).

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:21PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:21PM (#427781) Journal

      I actually tried to use one just last night. I usually don't, but was talking with my girlfriend and wanted to send a hug emoji. They didn't have one. Nice to see they're getting *socks* though!

      (That was Facebook Messenger's collection, not Unicode though...not sure if there's any relation other than both being poorly considered collections of largely useless emoticons)

  • (Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:33AM

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:33AM (#427906) Journal
    That's so insanely stupid I am just left in awe.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:52AM (#427912)

      ಠ▃ಠ