
East Asian character emojis – “the fuller” story - jmadsen
https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/east-asian-character-emojis/#%F0%9F%92%BB
======
sho_hn
At least in Korea, people don't really use inline emoji characters much - but
they use stickers (larger, often animated cartoon images of characters in a
variety of emotional stances or life situations, some with associated
personalities or relationships with each other) a whole ton. They serve a
variety of purposes, e.g. responding with a summary of what the other person
said to signal understanding/empathy/compassion, teasing, flirting ... there's
a lot of joy in maintaining and using a sticker collection actually, picking
the right sticker for an occasion is a unique form of eloquence to
collectively revel in. It's a big celebration of reading a room, wit and quick
thinking, just using images. It's some of the most joyful creative writing
around, I think. People also wind up adopting certain characters as "theirs"
in a group chat, so it adds to identity.

~~~
joveian
After I played my first JRPG, I notice every time a game tries to be at all
role playing without showing character emotion images next to dialog. I would
never have imagined it adding so much had someone just described it. What you
describe sounds like the same thing in a different context.

------
kalleboo
This article seems to completely miss the reason these were created as emoji -
they were encoded for use on the Japanese mobile web so that phones wouldn't
have to keep downloading images for "this train has free seats","loading this
site is free of data charges" and "apply for this event" etc. They weren't
meant for private use but for commercial use.

~~~
GolDDranks
I got the impression that the han symbols introduced here were originally NOT
in the emoji charsets ("NTT DoCoMo Pictographs" etc.), but come from the
"Japanese TV Symbols (ARIB)" charset. That means that they aren't originally
used in mobile phones, but in TV receivers. (Digital programming guide,
subtitles etc.) They were only included in the emoji range later, when they
became a part of Unicode.

~~~
kalleboo
I know the symbols were present on the mobile web, but I could be mistaken
about them actually being encoded as Emoji. I have a couple ancient gala-kei
lying around, I'll see if I can find one of the proprietary chargers and fire
one up tomorrow to research.

A quick google reveals this docomo<>au translation chart from 2008 with 空 and
満
[http://kiironinaritai.com/store/emoji/emoji_docomo_au.gif](http://kiironinaritai.com/store/emoji/emoji_docomo_au.gif)

And this page also from 2008 with a SoftBank table with 有, 無, 特, 割, ココ, サ etc
[http://m-pe.tv/u/page.php?uid=emoji0427&id=2](http://m-pe.tv/u/page.php?uid=emoji0427&id=2)

edit: the fact that 満,空 and 指 are right next to the "seat" emoji in the
softbank private encoding reinforces what I remembered about them being used
for mobile booking sites

~~~
GolDDranks
Okay, maybe I was wrong then about those being from ARIB. I used to use an old
gara-kei too not further than a few years ago (I think it was 2012), and
indeed, there were some han emojis on mobile too.

~~~
kalleboo
Everything is further muddied by the fact that the three operators all had
incompatible emoji sets, all squirreled away in unused parts of Shift-JIS.
IIRC, first docomo launched emoji, then someone else came out with "look we
have _animated_ emoji!", then the next company had to launch multicolor emoji,
"oh but now OUR new model has an extra 150 emoji!"

I'm sure some of the ones that ended up in Unicode came from ARIB, but others
were cobbled together from the operator sets.

~~~
masklinn
> the three operators all had incompatible emoji sets, all squirreled away in
> unused parts of Shift-JIS

It was even worse than that originally: NTT DoCoMo used private-use ranges in
both Unicode and SHIFT-JIS, au used embedded IMG tags in arbitrary text
content and SoftBank bracketed emoji codes in SI/SO escapes.

------
angry-hacker
Someone who is white and living in Eastern Europe I find comments like these
deeply offensive:

> overwhelmingly male, overwhelming white and overwhelmingly engineers

This is me, but why does every article picture me as someone who has power and
decision maker. Do I have to feel bad that I am male, white and engineer? I
have seen hunger, REAL povery, communism, I make less than your McDonalds
worker in U.S now and my standard of living is low compared to developed
world. Why do I have to always read something is wrong with me?

~~~
sho_hn
I don't think your frustration is warranted in this context, and context
matters. The statement (a quote used by the article) was making a claim as to
the staff involved with the expansion of Unicode being too homogeneous. If
true, this could realistically pose a problem. I have some first-hand
experience with this: I'm male, white and an engineer as well, but I'm also an
immigrant in an East Asian country. Doing so and acquiring local cultural
competency involved learning many things that weren't readily available to be
learned in my European country of origin. It's therefore very credible to me
that to serve a global audience, Unicode would benefit from a diverse staff
trained in diverse environments due the way skills and knowledge are
distributed.

In other words, no, there isn't anything wrong with being male, white and an
engineer (and nothing in the text says so, btw), but there might be (or have
been; the article describes a shake-up in the process thereafter) a problem
with decision makers at Unicode overwhelmingly fitting those specs. I think
you can easily make the argument for diverse representation in this use case.

This would of course benefit from the viewpoint of someone more familiar with
the makeup of the Unicode Consortium.

~~~
angry-hacker
It is just that every third article I read here on HN tells me so. I guess
it's not frustration over only this particular article. But if people talk
about diversity and tolerance, they should remind themselves that not all
white people have the same privilege as you do over there.

Where I live(d) I wasn't (and still don't) have an opportunity to open a
developer account to so I can submit my (free) app to the store. I wasn't able
to publish my app. I had to travel and go through horror making a bank account
in another country just so I could submit an app to app store.

I haven't had any influence over other people or groups, neither did my grand
grand grand parents. I'm sick and tired reading from half of the tech (!!!!)
article that all white men have some magical privilege.

~~~
Manishearth
In general, when folks talk of white privilege it's more nuanced than "all
white folk are privileged". I recommend going through
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-
crosleycorcoran/explainin...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-
crosleycorcoran/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-
person_b_5269255.html) , which explains privilege from the POV of someone who
felt that they didn't have any. It touches on intersectionality -- privilege
depends on more than one thing, and you may have privilege due to one aspect
of your life that gets negated due to others. This does mean that someone in
your exact situation without that aspect might be worse off. This doesn't mean
that you will be universally better off than folks who do not share that
aspect.

The concept of intersectionality is pretty well known and most of the folks
talking of diversity seem to be aware of it. Partially the communications
breakdown is caused by terminology; someone who understands this will
interpret the term "privilege" to include the nuanced nature of
intersectionality. Folks unaware of this will interpret it the straightforward
way and feel slighted. Such terminology discrepancies are nothing new; an in-
group usually will understand words differently from the outgroup.

~~~
angry-hacker
Well, Huffington Post is a terrible newspaper.

But the first thing it tells is the privilege of country you were born at,
meaning I'm less privileged than most of you here and maybe I shouldn't be
oppressed all the time with these articles.

Citing the article itself, the writers of the stories I'm complaining about
don't see their own privilege and should stop using term white straight men
because it's oppressive against 200mil or more white people currently living
in the ex soviet block!

Yes, I know I'm a little pissed right now, but go and check your damn
privilege, because I travelled to another country to submit my app to
appstore. The app failed miserably by the way.

~~~
Manishearth
Again, this is the point of intersectionality. You do not have the privilege
of being born in the US (or other such places). Understood. That is _exactly_
the point the article was trying to make, privilege is not a simple concept of
"you are white, ergo you are universally better off". Like I said, someone
non-white in your situation might be worse off, however (not always, again,
privilege is not a blanket statement). It's relative, and other aspects of
your life may negate the privilege.

The pointing out of privilege is not an attack. It can be _wrong_ some times,
but don't take it as an attack.

> should stop using term white straight men

Perhaps. Like I said, the terminology means something different to the in-
group. Many folks implicitly understand it in the context of
intersectionality. These folks do not mean to say that all white men are bad
or all white men have absolute privilege. It's something more nuanced.

~~~
angry-hacker
I understand the point you're trying to make but it's like saying don't take
these black crime statistics seriously, some black people are actually very
nice. Look at this one nice NBA player. Pointing our x rape statistics is
nothing but and x race shouldn't take it personally! It can be nasty sometimes
but you should take it personally. Jesus christ this sounds like Donald Trump!
I give you this example only because you're an American. Does two wrongs make
one right just like in maths?

Just like the privilege dogma itself preaches, the people who spread should
stop using such terms. Practice what you preach. I don't find anything nuanced
taking massive group of people and repeating they are all doing or have done
bad things.

~~~
sho_hn
The point Manisearth is trying to make is that "having privilege" is not the
same as "doing bad things" and also not the same as "having privilege in all
things". You're at this point choosing to be offended by reading something
indiscriminately that, when used well, isn't being used indiscriminately, but
in a _context_.

------
masklinn
It's a bit odd (and sad) that the "Where is the Dumpling Emoji" project — or
the corresponding section of TFA — makes no reference whatsoever to the
previous Unicode Power Symbol project[0] which was also a grassroot effort to
get "missing" emoji into the standard (in that case the IEC Power Symbols ⏻ ⏼
⏽ and ⏾ with the "Power Off" symbol reusing the pre-existing ⭘ "HEAVY CIRCLE"
codepoint), although it was obviously more reduced in scope and lifespan.

[0] [http://unicodepowersymbol.com](http://unicodepowersymbol.com)

------
trans1iterati
It would be really cool to have anglicized transliterations of these, as a
standardized expression notation, with tool-tip call-outs.

The reason I say this, is because I have no idea what "🈯️" is, if it appears
within a body of text, in isolation.

Something like:

    
    
      !:symbolic-character-name:
    

or:

    
    
      [symbol]character-name[/symbol]
    

Think about the boundaries in communication something like that might smash.
(...or inadvertently create, I hope not!)

~~~
rch
Sounds like a good browser extension to me.

I'd also like to have filters and conversions to preserve reasonable
ideographs (e.g. ㊗), but optionally swap in a plain-text equivalent when
warranted.

------
GolDDranks
Having dabbled with the ARIB subtitling and data submission formats a bit
myself, I can't help but think, who thought that it'd be a good idea to embed
those symbols to the _character encoding_? Surely there's a room for a higher-
level structured language that has tags, escape codes or some other markup,
and allows for extensibility and ease of use. Keep the concerns separate!

~~~
kalleboo
In the Japanese TV broadcast standard, subtitles can embed bitmap versions of
kanji (generally only used for rare names or icons like "phone ringing"), but
due to bandwidth and TV hardware cost limitations they're very low-res,
whereas the encoded characters can be replaced by the TV with built-in high-
res fonts. Perhaps a protocol designed in 2016 would use vectors instead.

IIRC DVDs use 2-bit bitmap overlays, which is why DVD ripping software has to
use OCR to get softsubs.

~~~
gizmo686
That still doesn't answer why these particular characters needed their own
character. For instance, 🈯 U+1F22F [0] is really just a stylized version of 指
U+6307 [1] [2].

On a likely related note, the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement [3] seems
simmilarly redundent, being composed of characters such as 🈯 which, again,
should be a modification of of the basic 指 character. It is not like Unicode
does not support modifying characters.

EDIT: not "likely related" the emoji character described in the article is
just 🈯. This character is called called "Squared Cjk Unified Ideograph-6307".

[0] [http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-
list.html#1f22f](http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f22f)

[1] [https://unicode-table.com/en/6307/](https://unicode-table.com/en/6307/)

[2] Insert rant about Han unification

[3] [https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/enclosed-ideographic-
sup...](https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/enclosed-ideographic-supplement/)

~~~
cooper12
My guess would be because of semantics. The plain version is the character
itself used in text. The squared version is a specific symbol used in
television for "designated hitter". It's the same reason that there are
unicode characters that looks exactly like latin characters, except they're in
different unicode blocks.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph#Unicode_homoglyphs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph#Unicode_homoglyphs))

~~~
Symbiote
It will be for compatibility with those old encodings.

Otherwise, these two codepoints should be used:

U+6307 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6307

U+20DE COMBINING ENCLOSING SQUARE

To give this: 指⃞

That can work on any character, and there are other enclosing options:

X⃝ circle

X⃞ square

X⃟ diamond

X⃠ backslash circle

X⃢ screen

X⃣ keycap

X⃤ triangle

So we can make an escape key: ␛⃣

U+241B SYMBOL FOR ESCAPE; U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP

