Emoji Encoding

[Husar]

Now the screenshots, maybe @therother can explain the exact details.



Remember that before I post, the text is only on my computer and after I posted, the browser displays the text that the server sends to my browser. Apparently the emojis are lost when the server creates the post for displaying in the browser. It could still be about fonts, but then there seems to be a fundamental difference in how fonts are handled on websites and in apps, etc.

[Montmorency]

Good stuff, but as I noted - for Youtube at least - the emojis display in Firefox but not Chrome or IE.

And clearly a lot of people can see and use them, because they show up frequently enough.

Still can't figure out key commands. For example, how do I type out U+1F600? These instructions don't cut it (not that there's much practical reason to be typing out emojis):

Inserting Unicode characters
To insert a Unicode character, type the character code, press ALT, and then press X. For example, to type a dollar symbol ($), type 0024, press ALT, and then press X. For more Unicode character codes, see Unicode character code charts by script.

Important: Some of the Microsoft Office programs, such as PowerPoint and InfoPath, cannot convert Unicode codes to characters. If you need a Unicode character and are using one of the programs that doesn't support Unicode characters, use the Character Map to enter the character(s) that you need.

Notes:

If ALT+X converts the wrong character code into Unicode, select the correct character code before pressing ALT+X.

Alternatively, precede the correct character code with the text "U+". For example, typing "1U+B5" and pressing ALT+X will always return the text "1µ", while typing "1B5" and pressing ALT+X will return the text

[Husar]

Good stuff, but as I noted - for Youtube at least - the emojis display in Firefox but not Chrome or IE.

And clearly a lot of people can see and use them, because they show up frequently enough.

Still can't figure out key commands. For example, how do I type out U+1F600? These instructions don't cut it (not that there's much practical reason to be typing out emojis):

You're right, I forgot that you mentioned the browsers (shame on me). They do show up for me on Youtube, in the app and in Edge on my phone and also in my Vivaldi browser, which is based on Chromium. Edge on the desktop has them as well.
They still don't show up here on the Org though. Which makes it really strange because now it seems like in some cases it depends on the website and in others on the browser.

What is your OS? Do you use Windows 10 or an older one? Since you mentioned IE but not Edge. There could be an element of OS support as well.

[therother]

I'm afraid the more exotic characters have always been a black box for me as well.

As to why some won't work on the Org, I suspect this is due to the database using the (then) default MySQL database collation latin1, which is a single byte character set. latin1 doesn't support as wide an array of characters that a multibyte character set such as utf8, which is I believe the current default. We moved to vBulletin 15 years ago, which was when the decision was made. IIRC, converting the database to utf8 isn't straightforward, particularly such a large and old database as the Org's.

[Montmorency]

You're right, I forgot that you mentioned the browsers (shame on me). They do show up for me on Youtube, in the app and in Edge on my phone and also in my Vivaldi browser, which is based on Chromium. Edge on the desktop has them as well.
They still don't show up here on the Org though. Which makes it really strange because now it seems like in some cases it depends on the website and in others on the browser.

What is your OS? Do you use Windows 10 or an older one? Since you mentioned IE but not Edge. There could be an element of OS support as well.

W7

I'm afraid the more exotic characters have always been a black box for me as well.

As to why some won't work on the Org, I suspect this is due to the database using the (then) default MySQL database collation latin1, which is a single byte character set. latin1 doesn't support as wide an array of characters that a multibyte character set such as utf8, which is I believe the current default. We moved to vBulletin 15 years ago, which was when the decision was made. IIRC, converting the database to utf8 isn't straightforward, particularly such a large and old database as the Org's.

Raises the specter of the Org shutting down as maintenance becomes unmanageable with time.

[Husar]

W7

That could easily be part of your problem. Perhaps Firefox has some kind of built-in emoji support while IE and Chrome rely on the OS for that. I don't think W7 has native emoji support like Win10 does. Does not seem like the sort of thing they would patch in shortly before the end of official support.

edit with further research: https://blog.getemoji.com/post/57054...-support-emoji

Windows — Windows 8 and 8.1

Internet Explorer — Yes!
Firefox — Yes!
Safari — Yes!
Chrome — No ☹
☹ If using Windows 7, Windows Vista, or any other early version of Windows, you will not see Emoji correctly in any browser.

And to finally nail the Firefox thing as well: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

Added a built-in Emoji set for operating systems without native Emoji fonts (Windows 8.0 and lower and Linux)

So it's basically that your Windows does not support emojis, but Firefox has special built-in emoji support since version 50. That's why you only see them in Firefox and nowhere else.

You could have a look at this, but not sure what exactly could go wrong or what it does: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-24b7bec8c444

[nicholascn]

great work