emojis everywhere, seeking understanding / clarity / opinion

[Wm]

background:

gnc 3.0 allows emojis in places I think inappropriate

e.g.

account names
account codes
securities

and offers them in places it shouldn't

e.g.

dates
numbers

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the thing I'm wondering about is if I am totally out of date or just 
being realistic.

Argument A: emojis are everywhere, everyone knows what they are, they 
all mean the same thing, you're an old, out of date, fart, blah [3]

Argument B: emojis are non standard, depend on platform, environment and 
are by definition inconsistent and can't be reported on, used for tax 
purposes, used internationally or generally be used for significant 
financial communication [1]


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I also think there is something else (Trump supporters really should 
just leave the room now, it'll save you apoplexy).

it would make more sense to me if, long term, gnc allowed other 
character sets (words have meaning) rather than trying to allow ill 
defined jumbles of high bit chars in plain text xml files [4]

my suggestion is that words that are understandable to the user, their 
community in general, their tax and government authorities, etc are more 
useful than emojis

===

and from a personal POV I just don't like them and think their use 
inappropriate in a broad project like gnc that tries to be agnostic.

===

half for fun is this (.)(.) female breasts, an overweight man's chest or 
a pair of eyes ?  We think we know when we use them and they're often 
fine amongst friends ... but do they belong in an accounting application 
as accounting is, usually, formal in one sense or another and often used 
for communicating to people outside of our immediate social circle.

or to put it another way, do we want to be the accounting program that 
allowed someone to use a picture of a turd for the inland revenue and 
then used that in their tax return :)

===

[1] I accept, absolutely, that a nice smile face (I tend to stick to 
text, myself) is pretty much universal these days; my argument is that 
when you send me your emoji it doesn't necessarily appear the same to 
both of us, mainly because there are a whole bunch of people owning [2] 
these things.

[2] since some emoji sets are proprietary, how does that fit in with gnc 
as an open source accounting project ? <-- I'm not invoking Stallman 
weirdness so much as practical stuff like: are we all seeing the same thing?

[3] return *fun* insults by e-mail please otherwise you'll get put on 
the international wait-a-bit time zone dysfunctional list too :)

[4] did a dev look at that and think, "super idea, we *must* include 
non-text chars in our text based xml file.  absolutely.  best idea ever 
hashtag" or whatever the current parlance is.

-- 
Wm