[JDEV] Emoticons: guidelines

[Dave]

There are a number of Web pages outlining "standard" emoticons.  What's wrong with simply using them?

Dave Cohen <dave at dave.tj>

Motto: Don't invent stuff you don't have to :-)


Mattias Campe wrote:
> 
> (I changed from e-mail adres: from cobnet at hotmail.com to this one, just 
> that you know ;-) )
> 
> "Just" (few weeks) learned Jabber and I really like the open source 
> thing, to bad that Jabber wasn't just before MSN, ICQ, ... :(
> 
> Great, open source, everyone can build his own client. Well the problem 
> is that it is going the wrong way with the emoticons. Everybody can 
> define it's own ones... You can say "So, what the f*ck is your problem", 
> Well, for some really strange reason, a lot of people "kick" on 
> emoticons. Real life example: I tried Everybuddy to give my sister 
> MSN-acces through my linux box. She totally disliked the program because 
> of the lack of emoticons.
> 
> Well, just fine, but what will make an emoticon and what not? We could 
> take over all of the emoticons of MSN, being the most populary 
> emoticon-IM-System on the whole planet. Real life example: tried to 
> convince a friend of me to go with Jabber and not to take an MSN 
> account. His friends were on MSN, so he did too :( .
> I would rather like to continue the idea of "[JDEV] Leaving proprietary 
> systems for what they are" because Jabber will make it, with or without 
> MSN, ICQ, Yahoo!Messenger, ... So we just define our own emoticons.
> 
> I personally think that the representation of an emoticon should be 
> descriptive, because it could be that people use a non-emoticon client 
> (e.g. they find all those emoticons overhead). So instead of (l) (MSN 
> example) we could use :love: Because I think "I :love: you" is more 
> comprehensible than "I (l) you" (Hmm, maybe a bad example ;-) ). A 
> problem that you have then, is that it will be probably all English. We 
> could use esperanto instead, but I don't think a lot of people know a 
> lot of esperanto ;-)...
> 
> But how will we do it?
> I think it want be easy to try to make all existing clients using our 
> guidelines. So I thought of the following: we build an emoticon website 
> with explanation about our goal. We contact as much of graphic 
> developers as we can, this to make it the client developers easy to 
> build in new emoticons. Everything should be prepared: static emoticons, 
> moving emoticons and as much emoticons as possible.
> 
> Once again, maybe this sounds strange to you, but people really kick on 
> emoticons. It's like "programs don't have to be usefull, they have to be 
> cool". I'm almost sure I can convince my sister just like that if a 
> client would have cool emoticons.
> 
> 
> Sorry that this is written like my idea will break through and sorry 
> that I used "we" a lot, but that made it easier to write. BTW I don't 
> think I'll have the time now help to develop this idea (if you would 
> like it :D ) because of projects and coming examinations. Still I would 
> like to have your thoughts on this one, maybe when my exams are finished 
> I can try to (help) develop this idea.
> 
> greetings
> .m.
> aka (c)obnet
> 
> ---
> http://student.rug.ac.be/astrid/Internet/jabber.php
> 
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