[JDEV] Emoticons & Genicons

Wed Apr 24 01:22:02 CDT 2002

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 12:03:17AM -0400, Adam Theo wrote:
> My only question right now is whether I should separate "emoticons" 
> (those emotive-based graphics) from "genicons" (my own term for 
> non-emotive, generic graphics of beer mugs, mail envelopes, house keys, 
> moons, and such). I think I should, since I don't want to clutter the 
> "emoticon space". But, if I do separate them, should I include them in 
> the same JEP, or two different JEPs?

imho it should be two different JEPs as there is only a limited amount
of emoticons (assuming we don't think of 'laughing while holding a finger
in my ear' emoticons) adn pretty much unlimited amount of genicons.

After reading your document i propose to use jabber:x:genicons for
genicon usage:

<message to="ressu at ressukka.net">
  <body>
     The Cat is in the bag, honestly!
  <body>
  <x xmlns="jabber:x:genicons">
    <genicon image="cat"/>
    <genicon image="oldbag" string="bag"/>
    <genicon src="http://www.ressukka.net/wink.png" string="honestly"/>
  </x>
</message>

the image attribute would contain generic strings, ones that could be
stored locally, as not all who use jabber have internet access, then
there is the string attribute which defines which bit of the text should
be replaced and last but not least there is the src tag which allows
fetching the image from the internet directly, just like your XHTML
example.

it would then be up to the client to look up matching icons, or request
them from the sender.

The strings could be cached and used on other strings too, or the short
hand version would be to call then with :imagename: (ie. :beer:)
while using <x/> tags, we allow the text to be rendered cleanly with
clients that do not support genicons.

this way the genicons could be just about anything, where emoticons
would be predefined.

Sami

-- 
			  -< Sami Haahtinen >-
      -[ Is it still a bug, if we have learned to live with it? ]-
	-< 2209 3C53 D0FB 041C F7B1  F908 A9B6 F730 B83D 761C >-