[JDEV] Emoticons: guidelines

[Michael Brown]

>  > 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?
>
> Yes I see, but the Jabber community wouldn't have to wait for the MSN
> transport to do a translation, e.g. :love: to (l). Because if sb. (using
> Jabber) sends "I :love: you" to sb. using MSN, the MSN person gets "I
> :love: you". That person won't see any cool graphical emoticon, but
> still (s)he'll be able to understand it!
> Maybe, at a later point, the MSN transports developers have the
> time/spirit/... to implement the translations, and then the MSN person
> gets: "I (l) you" and again (s)he will understand it because the (l)
> will be showed as an graphical emoticon.
> So my point is that we don't have to wait for the MSN transport to
> change. You see?

Yes, of course then MSN will show the text instead of the icons, but to an
MSN user, it will appear that the Jabber user doesn't support emotcions, and
also, text-ized icons coming back the other way will be almost unreadable.
The only real way to do real support, is to get the transport guys on board.
I don't know who looks after the MSN transport, and if they think it would
be worth the coding time...anyone?

Michael.