neo-ideographs and the Web, some history

A thread came up on WAI-IG which mentioned emoji in the iMode mobile flavor of 
the Web.  These are emoticon or icon symbols in a symbology private to the 
target device.

 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2002JulSep/0133.html

While the answer for these proprietary symbols in particular would seem to be
"just don't use them" we have parallel problems for symbol languages and the
symbols that are proliferating in international trade.  Fabric care symbols
are a representative example.

As Lisa Seeman says, the traceability to clear explanation of what is meant,
that is the purpose of the schema at

 http://www.ubaccess.com/ils.html#drafts

Applies to these ideographic symbols as well as to spelled words.

Masayasu Ishikawa was kind enough to provide two historical references to related 
discussions in W3C and WAP:

At 12:51 AM 2002-07-14, Mimasa wrote:
>Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net> wrote:
>
>> >MI:
>> >You may do so if you want, but be aware that there was an extensive
>> >discussion on this topic about 3 years ago on the HCG and a mailing
>> >list was created, which is pretty much dead now - no message for more
>> >than 2 years.
>> 
>> What was that list?  Did anything useful happen on it?  Is the archive still
>> there?
>
>w3c-char-glygh list is archived at:
>
>    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-char-glyph/
>
>There were some interesting discussion, but no resolution was made.
>You might also want to take a look at WAP Pictogram Specification,
>available from:
>
>    http://www.wapforum.org/what/technical.htm
>
>Regards,
>-- 
>Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
>W3C - World Wide Web Consortium 

Al

Received on Sunday, 14 July 2002 09:00:55 UTC