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Twitter has made a subtle, but not insignificant, change in the way it counts emoticons in its 280-character limit. In the future, all natively supported emoji will count for two characters. Previously, adding skin tone and sex modifiers to an emoji unintentionally penalized users, and many probably did not even realize it.
In a new blog, Twitter explained that the way emoticons are coded gives a variety of character numbers that can be confusing and limiting for users. Individual emojis, like a flag, can have four characters, whereas a simple acting man requires only two characters. The addition of modifiers for features such as skin tone or a flag style has increased the number of characters. Basically, it was a technical problem, but it also inadvertently nullified efforts to bring about equality in the emoji space. "This update marks a significant advance for our service," said Twitter in its announcement.
In response to Twitter's change, Emojipedia gave some examples of the range of character accounts that different emojis would previously produce:
As Verge points out, Unicode uses a method called "zero-width joins" to combine some of its emoticons. This tells the platforms that emoticons should not be separated by a space but should instead be combined into a new form. For example, the generic family emoji () is interpreted by services such as Twitter and Google Docs as two characters, it is an autonomous emoji. But if you want to add another son to the mix, the platform must combine the man and woman emojis with two boys (? + ? + ? + ?). Each emoji is interpreted by Google as two characters and each space between them as a single character. When zero width splicers are used, you get an output that looks like this: ????, but it is still interpreted as 11 characters.
Windows 10 supports 52,000 combinations of the emoji family. These different combinations result in different numbers of characters. The emoji family with a medium dark complexion () is interpreted as 19 characters, as well as for other complexions.
Overall, this change means more "emojis" for "everyone".
[The Verge]Source link
