Hacker News Reader

Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

> we suggest to install an appropriate font, such as Symbola

It's worth pointing out that this is not the official 'Apple Color Emoji' font, so it will always lag behind Apple's implementation. That, and have completely different (IMHO, ugly) artwork, which can be a real issue

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/12/473965971/...

http://samedaytranslations.com/blog/lost-in-translation-emoj...

View on HN

Arguably, your NPR link backs-up the decision. The fact that Apple's emoji's often diverge considerably from the Unicode standard (and set their own, divergent emotional meanings) is a pretty good argument --- for an avowedly cross-platform app such as Emacs --- to maintain consistency across operating systems.

Is it really Apple's font? I believe WhatsApp on Android uses the same. I guess everyone identifies them as Apple's because WhatsApp is not popular in US. I find it way uglier than Google's, too much detail makes them unusable at small sizes.

Anyway I find emoji worsen the communication. There was a time where I could just use :) when I was smiling and :D when really laughing. Now there's so much different smiling variants that you have to use at least 3 laughing-with-tears to convey even a little amount of joy so the other side doesn't think you're just dismissing them with a normal non-laughing smile.

PS what's going on with scrolling in the second link?

Yes, it is Apple's artwork. While Apple might have licensed it to some third parties, I'm more inclined to believe that they turn a blind eye to others using it 'inappropriately' because it still plays in their favour.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com