Accordion Bruce

While I was writing an emoji proposal it often seemed like the system wasn't sustainable. It seems mostly like a fun way to get people to update their operating systems. But the fact that they appear differently on different platforms seems against the foundational UNICODE idea of unifying fonts across platforms. So many issues as they multiply though. I know some UNICODE folks have long been uncomfortable with having been given responsibility for them, sort of by default. But they're so popular! "Emoji studies" has become a little niche corner of computer science and sociology now. Fun but weird. It'll be curious to see what happens to them. The coming Emoji wars may get ugly, while being so inconsequential. Tangent on this tangent: Currently I'm supporting the creation of an Antique Record Player / Phonograph Emoji. For Antiques, Vinyl Records, and Deprecated Technology. It looks good at 16pt, unlike say, 📟 Pager which, who recognizes that? In our proposal I discuss Emoji eWaste, little-used emoji for outdated tech. But once they're coded, they remain supported. So we got 💽 Minidisk forever! The antique Phonograph is sort of a commentary on this, with a recognizable object that has meant "old fashioned" for a long time. Future-proof old fashioned. I'm surprised my little question has had such meaningful response. Emojis and fonts in general generate such odd interest.

Helpful responses. I'll have to try that glyph trick. Emoji in general are more complicated that most people realize, and maybe more trouble than they're worth. But they've got more attention (welcome?) on UNICODE than it's ever had before. 🤓 I wrote the proposal for the surprisingly successful 🪗 emoji, so got to learn more about them than I'd ever considered. So many issues with rendering on different platforms with non-standard images, and now the combination "sequence" emojis that only work sometimes. It's a bit of a mess. I appreciate people working on standards everybody can adopt. Good for Affinity folks deciding what's worth spending time on. It's appreciated.

A few months later: Is there any plan for Affinity apps to support SBIX? It's an edge use, but Apple is adding more of them to their emoji font. It may be the only place users would see it. Apple might only use them for zwj sequence emoji like "Heart-On-Fire"? ❤️‍🔥 Other OS's may render these differently. May be reason to avoid the hassle to support? (As a workaround I cut and pasted the emoji image where I needed it.) https://emojipedia.org/emoji-zwj-sequence/ Curious: The combined sequence emoji show up on the side in the Layers Panel on MacOS 12.6 Monterey, but not in text items in Affinity Design. Panel labels are presumably rendered separately by the OS?