Unicorn, cheese wedge, taco emoji and more coming to Unicode 8.0
The Unicode Consortium on Wednesday released the character database and code charts for Unicode version 8.0, which tacks on a total of 7,716 new and scripts and symbols to the standard, including 41 emoji.
Most interesting to frequent texters, the fresh emoji characters ripe for inclusion in software platforms like Apple's iOS and Mac include often requested pictographs like a unicorn head, turkey and hot dog, a number of which are shown in the above image.
Alongside food items and large flightless birds, Unicode 8.0 includes a wider selection of smiley faces, religious symbols and a handful of sports symbols. The consortium expanded symbol modifiers to support greater skin tone diversity, a big feature request first instituted last year.
Apple has yet to roll the full Unicode 7.0 database into its software offerings, but chose to incorporate select skin tone swatches and characters when it launched a new emoji picker in iOS 8.3. It is unknown if there are plans to support Unicode 8.0 in a future version of iOS.
An index of this year's additions, edited in part by Apple engineer Peter Edberg, can be found on the Unicode website.
Aside from emoji, Unicode 8.0 includes a set of lowercase Cherokee syllables to go along with existing Cherokee glyphs, support for Ik language characters in Uganda, Kulango in the C?te d'Ivoire and other languages of Africa, Arabic letters to support Arwi, CJK unified ideographs, a symbol for Georgian lari currency and more.
The Unicode Standard version 8.0 core specification is pending due to ongoing editorial work, but the consortium expects publication on Aug. 26.
Most interesting to frequent texters, the fresh emoji characters ripe for inclusion in software platforms like Apple's iOS and Mac include often requested pictographs like a unicorn head, turkey and hot dog, a number of which are shown in the above image.
Alongside food items and large flightless birds, Unicode 8.0 includes a wider selection of smiley faces, religious symbols and a handful of sports symbols. The consortium expanded symbol modifiers to support greater skin tone diversity, a big feature request first instituted last year.
Apple has yet to roll the full Unicode 7.0 database into its software offerings, but chose to incorporate select skin tone swatches and characters when it launched a new emoji picker in iOS 8.3. It is unknown if there are plans to support Unicode 8.0 in a future version of iOS.
An index of this year's additions, edited in part by Apple engineer Peter Edberg, can be found on the Unicode website.
Aside from emoji, Unicode 8.0 includes a set of lowercase Cherokee syllables to go along with existing Cherokee glyphs, support for Ik language characters in Uganda, Kulango in the C?te d'Ivoire and other languages of Africa, Arabic letters to support Arwi, CJK unified ideographs, a symbol for Georgian lari currency and more.
The Unicode Standard version 8.0 core specification is pending due to ongoing editorial work, but the consortium expects publication on Aug. 26.
Comments
Oh thank god!
I agree... More than a few emojis and it takes so long to scroll through that it's tiresome, and with that many you have no idea whether one exists for whatever you're looking for anyway.
I have a question. How much space does this consume on my device?
Who the hell is The Unicode Consortium, and don't they have anything better to do with their time than to release new, stupid emojis?
First it was all of those stupid race based emojis and now it's tacos and cheese wedges.
All of these emojis are useless and there's too many of them. Do those people really think that I'm going to spend five minutes searching through pages and pages of stupid emojis, just to find one that I might be looking for to use in a short message that took less than 10 seconds to type?
Yay Taco Emoji!!
I never really use the emojis, except for the different smiley faces. Never see anyone else use them either. Why would I put an icon of a tree in my message instead of just typing it? ???? Half of them wouldn't make sense in any conversation at all..
That looks like a Christmas tree... what if I want a Hanukkah bush??
That one was needed. You can't have:
without:
and:
The list with images is here:
http://emojipedia.org/unicode-8/
Suggestions for unicode 9 are here:
http://emojipedia.org/unicode-9/
With the above emoji now, you'll need to have the following, which will be added to the next unicode update in about 9 months:
It's surprising it's taken until unicode 8 to add:
There's going to be so many that they'll need to let you use a text search to find the one that matches what you want to say. The most popular ones that have been used in public messaging are here:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-100-most-used-emojis/
It takes a while to scroll through the grid of emoji so that's probably why the most popular ones come nearer to the left:
[VIDEO]
They should have an abbreviated way of typing them in so typing something like :ro would bring up a list of emoji that match and rolleyes would be one of them. :pi could bring up pie, pizza etc. and then you can just tap the right one more quickly. The emoji can have multiple meanings attached.
I really wish they were animated though. Static images don't make them much more useful than text but animations can convey more emotion.
They wouldn't use much space because they are small and vectors. It would be less than 4kB per frame so at 12fps and no more than 10 seconds, the maximum would be about 500kB and 100 animations would be no more than 50MB.
Apple can scan twitter for the most frequently used phrases and emoji and come up with cool animations for each. For any that are outside the supported emoji range, they can host a static or animated image or something. Hundreds of millions of people are sending emoji graphics out, they should be made to look good and having them exclusive to Apple platforms would make people who message frequently more likely to use Apple's devices.
That looks like a Christmas tree... what if I want a Hanukkah bush?????? Another faith may want a camel's ass...
So, please elaborate exactly which faith you might be referring to, that would want a "camel's ass"? If you're gonna be a filthy, despicable bigot, at least have the balls to say what you want to say clearly. Let me help you out: Muslims are camel-fuckers. Is that what you were trying to say? Or was it a hilarious "joke", in the same way that "black people are monkeys" is hilarious?
I'm surprised at how many of shameless and extreme bigots like you reside on this forum, dedicated to a company who by all accounts encapsulates the opposite of this filth.
Woooooah! Someone's touchy!