by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/09/10 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/09/10/10447092.aspx
I tend to find the different forms of Unicode and the consequences of using them to be fascinating
Like Twitter, which uses UTF-16 for it's tweets, which only punishes users whose names are off the BMP.
Or Facebook, which uses UTF-8, which arbitrarily punishes people depending on their arbitrary position in the code space.
And even texting, which punishes people are on whether they use ASCII text or not.
As I mentioned in this blog or in GSM standard someone called out in the comments.
One could use UTF-32 and punish everyone equally but it hardly seems worth the space.
Ah, the intricacies of the UTF forms....
Maybe I should add something new to the mix to make it even more complicated! 😏
Let's add the Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows Phone 8, shall we?
It has a Me Tile that has special powers to make Facebook look foolish, after all.
From that Tile, you add emoticons like 😏😍😊😃😆😞😒😔, emoticons that Facebook doesn't currently allow.
The Tile that makes Facebook look wrong! I use it all the time now, because maybe the constant work will push Facebook into doing the right thing.
Nevermind, I'm not that patient. I'll use a blog, THIS blog, to see if I can shake some sense into them...
Now that I think about it, the problem seems to happen most often with the Facebook app provided by Microsoft. So maybe this is our bug, technically?
Doug Ewell on 10 Sep 2013 9:26 AM:
I'm running WP8 on the Lumia 920, and the Facebook app has several issues to be addressed besides emoji support.
You might clarify that "punishing people" by using UTF-8 or -16 refers only to message size, not whether characters are actually supported.