[UA-discuss] 69 New Emoji Have Been Approved By Unicode - Just in case you thought this Emoji stuff was a flash in the pan ????

[Asmus Freytag]

On 3/31/2017 12:28 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 12:00:53PM -0700, Jothan Frakes wrote:
>> I see this on the agenda for the Redmond/Seattle group meetings - are we
>> deciding if this is in scope or not?

An input into the evolving emoji specifications might be useful, so that 
the issue of why they are so unsuitable for identifier gets some raised 
visibility.

The twin problem with emoji is first, that they look very concrete when 
presented as images - unlike some "foreign" scripts, everybody thinks 
they can read/recognize them; and second, that they are incredibly 
appealing to people who view DNS labels as expression of their identity.

 From a technical point it might be enough to point to the IDNA 
parameters, but from an outreach point of view, this falls woefully 
short. (I do like Andrew's various summaries of the issue; they should 
get incorporated into UTR#51 ...)

A./

> In scope for what?  Emoji are just not allowed in the server-part
> unless you're suggesting that this group ought to be promoting names
> that are contrary to every IETF specification on the matter and are
> contrary to the ICANN IDN guidelines.  If this group is in fact going
> to recommend sugh things, I predict that the future of acceptance is
> going to be even further from universal than you'd like.
>
> Perhaps you're talking about recommendations for use of emoji in
> local-parts, since email addresses are identifiers.  Given the
> discussion in http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr36/ about visual
> spoofing, I hope the recommendation is just that emoji are interesting
> but poorly suited for identifiers.  Since people can put literally
> anything they want in the local-part, they're going to do what they
> want anyway.
>
>> efforts towards solutions in UA, and on the plus side, Emoji support seems
>> to get attention from the developers at the moment.
> Of course it does.  Emoji are fun and cool.  The problem is that
> they'll create an enormous security problem if people try to use them
> for real in identifiers, at least today.
>
>> Emoji domains on the left side of the dot do work in a small subset of the
>> existing TLDs
> In some browsers.  And what is this "the left side of the dot" of
> which you speak?  DNS names are hierarchical.  There are lots of
> possible dots.
>
>>     - Addition of Emoji support as a primary project with an opportunity to
>>     introduce UA readiness - Developer 'in the code' for Emoji support can be
>>     more efficient for the team and address the matters that give access to the
>>     next billion customers.
> I am having a very hard time understanding what "in the code for emoji
> support" means, so I'd like to narrow that down.
>
>> What I mean about Emoji is that they are often used as short form and are
>> composed using characters like :) (colon closeparen) that would be
>> typically illegal in a DOMAIN, URI, URL, SMTP or other protocol - so it may
>> open a new set of challenges beyond the already daunting set we're hoping
>> to chip away at in the existing quixotic list.
> The string ":)" is perfectly legal in the DNS but not legal in IDNA or
> under the LDH rules.  It's extremely hard to use, however.  The same
> is true in local-parts of email.
>
>> messenger applications.  Try :) in skype, facebook other messenger and in
>> most cases it converts to the emoji smiley face.
> Sometimes this is for display and sometimes this is on the wire.
> Figuring out which would be important.  I can think of recommendations
> that would be useful to developers here, but they might be more
> properly developed as technical recommendations.
>
>>     - There would have an issue with the interplay of IDNA and the
>>     'automagic' emoji handling / conversion apps perform.
> Like that emoji and all punctuation are both not allowed under IDNA.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>