[art] Re: use of Emojis in Internet Standards

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Robert,
At 06:38 AM 10-03-2026, Robert Viragh wrote:
>We are developing an Internet standard (a draft specification is 
>attached) which is currently undergoing cryptographic peer review as 
>to its characteristics.  Our implementers are saying that the 
>specification of Emojis presents extreme difficulties.
>
>We would like to know whether you think it can be appropriate to 
>include Emojis in an Internet Standard, and whether it has 
>widespread compatibility with Windows, Mac, and Linux, and Android, 
>iOS, and Windows Phone devices.
>
>We thought that our table of emojis would be simple and 
>straightforward to implement:
>
>image.png
>
>(our proposed table of emojis).  We chose the emojis to be widely 
>compatible and easily recognizable.
>
>Our implementers are having trouble matching them.
>
>Here are our questions:
>1. Are there a set of emojis that are considered widely compatible?
>2. Do you think it is appropriate to include it as normative in an 
>Internet standard?
>3. How should emojis be specified in an Internet standard?
>
>In terms of ergonomics, we have found that this ergonomic 
>presentation makes it up to 75% faster to discern differences.  You 
>can try this for yourself in this ergonomic comparison tool:
>
><https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/05e8b21b-fb31-4c07-83e2-5c8138c25670>https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/05e8b21b-fb31-4c07-83e2-5c8138c25670 
>(for fast discernment, you can also focus on the first four words 
>and checksum at the end, before moving on to comparing the whole hash).
>
>Therefore we would like to continue to keep emojis in our Internet 
>Standard as we go through the standards process.

You may have to submit your proposal as an Internet-Draft [1] to get 
it through the standards process.

There is some information about compatibility on Android at 
https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/text-and-emoji/emoji2 
I don't believe that it would be inappropriate to reference a Unicode 
Technical Standard {2].  "U+1F436" is used to represent the dog face 
emoji in Unicode. You could use the same approach.  The visual 
representation may differ across operating systems.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. https://www.ietf.org/participate/ids/
2. https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/