Hacker News Reader

Comment by dukoid | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit sad that many of the ETSI EN 300 706 V1.2.1 graphics characters (1, section 15.7.2) are not available in Unicode.

I am maintaining a small program that renders images directly in the terminal using unicode block graphics characters (2), and these would come really handy to enhance the conversion...

1) https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/300700_300799/300706/01...

2) https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer

View on HN

There is a proposal to add them to Unicode, but the process takes a while (and its the third proposal since 2017): https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18275r-terminals-prop-no-at...

Looks great! Do you know why the other two have failed? I was initially wondering whether it makes sense to bundle legacy and teletext all together into one "big" proposal, but then I realized that there is a very high amount of overlap...

well, the three proposals are from the same group of people. they probably are reactions to feedback from the unicode technical commitee[0]. I've looked into the utc meeting notes, but those don't really contain much info[1].

[0]: see the progression at https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/18-275... and https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/18-235 and https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/17-435 [1]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18007.htm and https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18272.htm and https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18115.htm

>There is a proposal to add them to Unicode, but the process takes a while

Whereas if it was for adding some BS emojis, it would have been done in a week.

The process of proposing and adding an emoji to Unicode is slower and less easy than you seem to think it is.

And yet it happens like clockwork, with 200+ additions in the past several years and 100s more in the pipeline...

http://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html

Except if you mean that some layman proposing a new emoji for addition to the Unicode standard is difficult -- but I'm talking about the big companies...

Mainly because Unicode is the industrial standard steered by major vendors (among others). There is even the dedicated Emoji Subcommittee (ESC) [1] to meet demands. It's obvious if you think about it.

[1] https://unicode.org/emoji/#Unicode_Emoji_Subcommittee

Reply on news.ycombinator.com