
Ask HN: Why are the no useful Unicode chars, like wifi? - pmlnr
Unicode 9 is bringing things like facepalm, avocado, canoe, etc. ( see http:&#x2F;&#x2F;emojipedia.org&#x2F;unicode-9.0&#x2F; ), but we still don&#x27;t seem to have characters for widely used signs, like wifi, bluetooth, various level signal bars, or, god forsake, RSS.<p>There is U+1F4F6, usually used as mobile data connection indicator, whereas we have U+1F508, U+1F507, U+1F509, U+1F50A, U+1F568, U+1F569, U+1F56A  just for speakers.<p>I&#x27;m unaware of the potential licensing problems on these signs, and it doesn&#x27;t really make sense not to have them.<p>Is anyone aware why is the situation like this?<p>( Note: HN strips astral-plane characters, so use U+ format )
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chriswarbo
> Is anyone aware why is the situation like this?

Maybe because logos don't have any place in an alphabet?

> it doesn't really make sense not to have them.

I would claim it doesn't really make sense to have facepalm, avocado, etc.

As far as I'm aware, the original set of emoji were included due to existing
messages on Japanese networks using proprietary encodings. There are precisely
_zero_ existing messages containing wifi or bluetooth logos as characters;
adding such things to unicode _creates_ a problem to solve, rather than
solving anything.

At this point it seems like unicode is being treated as a meme database, with
code points as URIs and the system font as a retrieval mechanism. This
bulldozes through a number of carefully chosen separations of concern
(characters/code points vs glyphs, glyphs vs fonts, fonts vs images, images vs
URLs, etc.), with the only reasoning I can fathom being to fit the current
implementation of the iOS on-screen keyboard.

