Wednesday, June 17, 2015

[Ulysses emoji update]



If you try to translate Ulysses into emoji you run into various serious problems:
  • different platforms support slightly different subsets, with slightly different representations, and the results of copying between them are often unpredictable
  • searching for the best symbol is slow and clumsy, so you'll probably have to compile your own exhaustive cheatsheets
  • they're optimised for Japanese teen culture, and you ought to master those meanings before redefining them
  • they have no grammar (like 'A said B thinks C will do X') and hacking one together from repurposed bits is tedious [terrible attempt] [fragments]
  • symbols acquire many meanings and context doesn't help disambiguate very well
  • if the Japanese teens have standard sexual euphemisms i haven't found their glossary yet
On the other hand, the challenge is enriching, and can produce unexpected insights as you reduce events and details to their broader themes...

grammar

plurals could be a plus sign, or even a number (x2)

1st/2nd/3rd person could be a number or icon or icon-with-number

past/present/future could be arrows??

in general, you want to 'bracket' modal events and introduce them with an indicator of the modality: A thinks, B dreamt, C will try

there's plenty of variant brackets that could indicate modalities too:

( ) thinks
[ ]
{ } imagines
⸨ ⸩ says
❨ ❩
❪ ❫
⸦ ⸧
❬ ❭
❮ ❯ future
❰ ❱
❴ ❵
❲ ❳
⦗ ⦘
⁅ ⁆
〈 〉









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