Add smileys support ?

First, I don’t think that we should do things just because it’s something that Facebook is doing, in an attempt to woo Facebook users to our platform. Diaspora should do what it’s users want, not what Facebook’s users want.

Problem is, it's not only Facebook... It's as old as I use Internet (1998) I'm used t use them since I used MSN. For better or worse, they exists and are widely used, not only on Facebook.

I agree we shouldn't bend to whatever Facebook make, but we have a tiny latitude to move. Our decision should not impersonate lack of features.

I agree that smileys could be such a non-essential feature that we can afford to throw them. But I think we have to seriously discuss if his absence can hurt.

Personally, it frustrates me to use Diaspora without smileys, I use Diaspora because I know it's still in dev. But if tomorrow, Diaspora is stable version, and having voluntarily transferred the smiley for outlandish reasons, I think it would be one of the point you have to leave! And by then, social networks, there will surely others ...

Smileys have always existed on the web. And then well the hashtag @ uses for city smileys why someone would suddenly lost their place ? For what it's kikoolol ? And ?

Knowing a <3 currently doing a heart ...

Hi all, A net user since mid 90s. I dunno how people equate smileys with fb/facebook only. I remember being on usenet and IRC in the first few days being on chat and the same was also used, abused, exploited whatever in email and all sort of correspondence since then. Characters like :) :P :( and others do share from where a person is coming from. If a person makes a rude statement about something or somebody when s/he is in a sad state, people would perhaps have a bit more latitude to that person, or otherwise be more rude to that person.

I do understand that it could go to the other extreme as well and have no answer for that. If D* wants to have non-geeky people this would be one of the basic features people would like.

We can have debates about the best way to achieve that but not having it would probably be an dodo like attitude .

My 2 paise.

If D* wants to have non-geeky people

That question that seems to be at the heart of just about every feature discussion here...

That question that seems to be at the heart of just about every feature discussion here…

An that's a bad thing ? In what ?
diaspora* is a social network, naturally attempting to reach each and every person, not only the computer scientists...

We know how to escape characters because we've used it a lot. Not everyone do... This is logic.

@augier It's not a bad thing at all. I completely agree with you! Read my earlier comments, I'm all for smiley's and understand them as essential even though I don't particularly need them myself :)

@rob12 : Okey, I apologize ! :)

@stefofficiel @shirish
Yes, we've always had smilies, but the decision to make them into graphics has been more recent. In fact, we have smilies on Diaspora right now, as :) and =P and >:-( all work. The argument is whether or not to include graphics.

FWIW, I'm not against graphics, although I do think that UTF-8's extended character sets are a more elegant solution. I also quite like emojis, like they have on Ello. The issue I have is with text substitution.

I quite like @Flaburgan's suggestion here:
https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/pull/4860
Add a link to the ASCII table in the publisher. This gives users easy access to smilies as well lots of other special characters. Perhaps it could be a dropdown menu, or something like that?

Which do not help me to decide whether or not to drop the graphics smileys on Jappix ! :)