Emoji Support
GP
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I think diaspora* should support emojis.
Emojis are Unicode smileys that originate from Japan. They were popularized by their integration in smartphone keyboards. They are very, very popular and are quickly becoming a standard in smiley usage. In fact, the Global Language Monitor determined that the heart emoji was last year's most popular "word".
Read more about emoji characters on Wikipedia.
However, even if they are widely supported on iOS and Android, emoji characters are very poorly supported on desktops and on the Web. See an example here. You should not see squares.
To remedy this problem, developers created Emoji One, an open source collection of emoji characters that are embedded directly on the Web. Twitter did the same, and now share their emojis with WordPress.com.
I suggest that diaspora* should do the same. I find emojis cute, they are becoming an open standard and they are very efficient in sharing feelings over the network.
Are you a developer? If you are interested in this idea, take a look at this page and this page.
Warning!
I bet some people will assume that emojis automatically replaces traditional text smileys/emoticons like :) or :(
This is wrong!
As you read earlier, emojis have their own Unicode characters. For example, a grinning face is Unicode U+1F603 (馃槂). No need to setup something like a system that replaces :grin: with an image!
Oh, and you don't like emojis? Well emojis are Unicode characters, so not displaying them properly because you don't approve them would be censorship! Diaspora* users should have the free speech to spam their contacts with how many emojis they like. 馃槈
Jonne Ha脽 Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:14PM
I don't like most emoji image representations in general and haven't seen a single one that would integrate well into Diasporas current design.
Jonne Ha脽 Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:15PM
but a javascript workaround that replaces the characters with images
Better read the proposal again, that's not what it's talking about. If that's really what's meant, I'm gonna have to block it, since then it would be extremely poor worded.
GP Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:17PM
@jhass What is the proposal about? You are extremely whimsical.
Jonne Ha脽 Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:22PM
I'm not too sure actually, that's why I abstained. I relate it to making sure that the storage backend can actually store the unicode characters in question, that the post processing does not alter them and maybe to provide some way to make sure they're displayed in one form or the other everywhere. As said I think it's a bit vague, which is why I abstained.
Jonne Ha脽 Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:23PM
Also please refrain from getting ad hominem, that's really not necessary and won't strengthen your position in anyone's eyes.
goob Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:23PM
GP, are you the same person as Cam Camil/riderplus (and others)?
GP Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:24PM
@jhass Then please don't make subjective observations that add nothing to the discussion: "I don鈥檛 like most emoji image representations in general"
Jonne Ha脽 Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:25PM
I'm not allowed to express my opinion now?
GP Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:27PM
@jhass The proposal is yet vague because it's about the concept, and not about the technology itself. There are probably multiple ways to achieve this. However, the current preferred method is the one Twitter, WordPress and @dumitruursu are using, which involves replacing the characters with images. That's the only way to achieve this yet, because fonts do not support colors (unless, on desktop computers). Google is working on a font for that (Google Noto Sans), but it's not yet supported.
GP 路 Tue 6 Jan 2015 6:12PM
@steffenvanbergerem @jhass What are you talking about? It's not a font, but a javascript workaround that replaces the characters with images.
See this example:
Here is the technology by Twitter.
It works well with any fonts and with any designs.
@jhass What's wrong with replacing those with images? That's what Twitter and WordPress do, and it works like magic.