[JDEV] Emoticons: guidelines

[Michael Brown]

> >>>I didn't mean that everything should be with words to be descriptive,
> >>>like ":-)" itself is descriptive enough. Indeed, I would also want as
> >>>much ASCII-art as possible. But for those other "expressions" (e.g.
> >>>love) other things are needed and (l) (b) don't mean much to me.
> >>>Suppose I'm a hardcore Windows-user and I talk to you through Jabber:
> >>>
> >>>I just (e) u. I also have a (i) for your project. Maybe we could
discuss
> >>>after a (~) or we could (b). I have some bad news, my (@) died, yeah, I
> >>>know: (u) .
> >>>Damn, I'm tired, well, look at the (o), I'll need some (c) , no I'll
> >>>just (s) ... BTW, do not forget, it's my (^) tomorrow, hope to have
good
> >>>weather so (h) Anyway, I'll (t) or (m) you tomorrow.
> >>
> >>That's awful.  If they had used [emailed] rather than (e) then it would
> >>still be readable on textbased clients, and it wouldn't take any longer
to
> >>type on the graphical client, because they just select an icon from a
> > list.
> >
> > Sorry to reply to my own reply, but thinking about it, I can see
Mattia's
> > point (I think)
> >
> > Why don't we come up with a Jabber "standard" list, that is text mode
> > friendly, and the transports can handle the translations to annoying
systems
> > like MSN.  (Transports are cool!)
>
> Yes, you see my point, thx! Because of the text mode friendlyness the
> transports don't even have to handle the translations because anyone
> will be able to understand it, they only won't see it graphically...

Sorry, I ment that the transports will have to do the translations when
messages are sent to other IM systems.  For example, if a graphical Jabber
user clicks the icon with the mouse for "email", they will see the icon on
their client, and when they send it to a text only Jabber client, the other
client will see :email:, however if they send it to someone on MSN, the MSN
transport must know to translate :email: to (e) so that native MSN clients
can interpret it. (and back again when messages come from MSN to Jabber.  So
for this to be practical, we need to define a list of tags, and a lookup
table, and convince the transport authors to implement the translation.
Otherwise we are stuck with using whatever Microsoft comes up with.  You
see?

> Michael, you proposed [email] instead of (e), but I should take :email:
> over [emailed]. Why? Well, I live in Belgium and I've got an azerty
> keyboard where the "[" and "]" are in a quiet unreachable position (and
> I need the <Alt Gr> key) and I think the ":" will be easy reachable with
> every keyboard. Conclusion: I can type :email: much faster than [email]

That's fine by me, but I don't really understand...  I would have thought
the harder to type the better, since it is less likely to be used in normal
conversation.  If you are using a graphical client then you will not be
typing emoticons, but selecting them from a menu (is this right? - I have
never used them), and if you are the type of person that prefers to use a
text only client, the chances are you think emoticons are a stupid idea and
won't bother using them anyway.

Michael.