💬 The Wrap
A short wrap this month. UTC 150 — the Unicode Technical Committee meeting — was held last week in Cupertino.
What is known from the meeting so far is that redhead emoji support was up for discussion, and Unicode just announced its preference for how to move forward on this.
Looking ahead, Emoji 5.0 is getting closer to release, with flags of England, Scotland and Wales approved as Flag Emoji Tag Sequences. Additionally, the first three additions were made to the emoji candidate list for 2018.
A release date isn't yet known for Emoji 5.0, but given that it includes many of the new Unicode 10.0 code points, it's likely to align with that release in mid-2017.
More to come on this in the coming weeks or months.
📰 News
🖥 Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002
Latest Windows Insider release adds a better emoji input panel for Pinyin users (alas nothing for regular emoji keyboard users) and stickers. Not listed in this post are the hidden new emojis for interracial couples.
🔥 A redhead emoji is finally in the cards
Should a redhead option be available for every emoji, or is a single redhead character sufficient? This was on the agenda at the latest UTC meeting and the result has been announced: Unicode shows preference for options #1 and #4; requests revised proposal be tabled.
🇬🇧 Emoji for England, Scotland and Wales flags to be released this year
A long time coming — flags of England, Scotland and Wales have frequently been viewed as "missing" but users in the UK home nations. Unicode president Mark Davis announced this support on Twitter as part of Emoji 5.0. More details on what this means.
💭 Interesting
📵 Android's Emoji Problem
Turns out that 96% of Android users can't see any of the latest emojis. This is becoming a real issue for those stuck with devices that don't receive updates. Mashable has provided some workarounds on their Snapchat channel.
🚽 Japanese toilet industry agrees to standardize complex bidet controls
Japan loves a symbol, and this month the bidet controls on toilets were standardized in a similar process to the ♨️ onsen symbol change from last month.
📲 Chinese Chars for Coders
Interesting and helpful guide from Nick Doiron on using written text in Simplified vs Traditional Chinese, Cantonese and Taiwanese.
👩⚖️ Who Owns Emoji?
I'm asked this quite a bit: who owns emoji? It actually depends on what you are asking about.
🌚 Emoji of the week: Moon face
"Is the moon face emoji genuine, or just plain creepy? Is it misunderstood, or is the dark side of the moon too suspicious?"
🔴 Happy Chinese New Year!
With Chinese New Year celebrations underway, note that each of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac Animals has an emoji. Also: Mooncake, Red Envelope, and Firecracker have all been added to the emoji candidate list for 2018.
🤗 Lastly
Some of the joy of writing an email about emoji updates is lost when so much is going on in the world right now. My thoughts are particularly going out to all those directly affected by recent actions in the USA.
Emojipedia is now displaying donation links for ACLU and the UNHCR on its homepage; and I encourage those of you who can donate, to do so.
I hope this email is provides some slight respite, as emoji really is a used in so many positive ways. Take care out there 💕