> Seems like someone at the Unicode Consortium accidentally downloaded a "free smiley pack" malware from the 2000's.
A 'free smiley pack' actually kinda describes where it came from. It was the standardization of symbols used by Japanese text networks. It's basically like if the ubiquitous vBulletin smilies had been standardized.
I don't think it can be deprecated, but it should probably follow the same rules as other Unicode symbols. It's bizarre how easily emojis are added to the standard in comparison to other symbols. Especially when there are serious problems with differing implementations of the standard.
Adding symbols from existing scripts requires research. It requires experts in that script to document the new symbols. It is exceedingly difficult to fix character definition errors.
Adding emoji is fairly simple by comparison. All you need is someone to submit a drawing, character name, and character metadata, and then maybe consensus. Because a new emoji a brand new character, no research is needed to avoid definition errors.
I don't think that's it. Proposals for stuff like additional punctuation[1] go nowhere. Wikipedia has to resort to using SVGs to discuss them[2].
I also think it's also much harder to define an emoji than you're giving it credit for. There's been a lot of unintentional variation in meaning between implementations, and I think part of that is due to a lack of guidance by the standard (particularly in smilies).
Implementations of emoji don't implement "meaning" -- meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Unless you mean the specific artwork. But some variation is obviously to be expected, not unlike... the variation you see in fonts.
Emoji are less abstract than words. That is to say, the shape of a word is less connected to the thing it depicts. It barely changes the perceived meaning of the word "face" if it's depicted in Arial or Times New Roman, but it makes a big difference to the perceived meaning of a hypothetical "face" emoji whether that face is smiling or frowning in different fonts.
When you have a concrete depiction of something, you are forced to provide details. The problem is that users cannot tell what details are standard and which are only in their font. Hence more guidance is needed for creators of emoji to ensure important, necessary details are consistent.
Scott McCloud discusses iconography and the differences between how words and pictures convey ideas in "Understanding Comics". I don't think he has a perfect model, but his Big Triangle is a pretty good starting point for a discussion. http://scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/triangle/index.html
The further you go left in that triangle, the more guidance is required to ensure that all implementations are depicting the same thing.
Han/Kanji are not really more abstract either, and they aren't always words -- sometimes they are used only for their sounds, for example. They are more efficient: they pack more strokes into a double-width character than any emoji could. But again, so what.
Indeed. Kanji are quite similar in abstraction level to roman letters. That's why I don't agree with your assertion that emoji and kanji are basically the same. The two are very, very different in how they convey ideas. Emoji are concrete, directly showing the thing they represent while kanji are abstract and mostly unrecognizable (more similar to English words).
A few typical examples would be 日 (sun), 人 (person) and 目(eye). No matter the font, the glyph for 人 will not imply details like gender. For emoji, extra care needs to be taken to strip out irrelevent details or you end up with problems like the 'pedestrian' emoji[1].
A 'free smiley pack' actually kinda describes where it came from. It was the standardization of symbols used by Japanese text networks. It's basically like if the ubiquitous vBulletin smilies had been standardized.
I don't think it can be deprecated, but it should probably follow the same rules as other Unicode symbols. It's bizarre how easily emojis are added to the standard in comparison to other symbols. Especially when there are serious problems with differing implementations of the standard.