Emojis again

@Simeon - I was about to start seeing if I could transfer a program from the iPad with Codea to my Mac or PC. The program uses emojis and I have a table of emojis that I use on my Codea project. I transferred the file to my PC by exporting as a Zip and unzipped to load the files into an editor. There I noticed that the table data consists of a number of non-alphanumeric characters which you can’t relate to the emojis directly. Are emoji classifications universal? Would it be possible to load emojis on another system from a Codea data table?

If not I need to totally re-think my approach. May have a few emoji ideas to feed back soon, busy trying to finish my current project now.

All - just a brief piece of code to demonstrate the benefits of emojis in Codea.

I tried posting this directly as code but ran into a problem in that the markdown editor showed the post correctly but as soon as I tried to post the entry it corrupted the post. So I have included a picture with the small piece of code I used to demonstrate what I found with emojis in Codea.

You may have found this before so if you have please ignore this post. But, previous examples with emojis posted in the forum used control characters to include the emojis. I found that a little tedious to use. So I tried building a table with emojis added between inverted commas like text. Then addressing the emoji needed via the table and it’s index. It worked.

So I have now built up a table containing all the emojis available to Codea from the editor - which means I can now address all the emojis in the table with its index and —- use it as a dependency. Or you can make a small table up of selections, like the example code in the attached image, as a table within your code.

All you need now is a way to convert vector images into emojis and the world is your oyster.

@Bri_G Trying to have emoji’s in the forum code doesn’t work very well.

@dave1707 - yeah, found that out pretty quick but the code is small and shows how to build the table up - easy peasy!!!

@Bri_G Here some code that will show you the value of emoji’s. Bring up the emoji keyboard and tap on one of them. It shows the size, the values, and the emoji. The largest one I found was 28 values long.

displayMode(FULLSCREEN)

function setup()
    showKeyboard()
    fill(255)
end

function draw()
    background(94, 83, 31, 255)    
    if keyVal~=nil then
        fontSize(120)
        text(keyVal,WIDTH/2,HEIGHT-250)
        fontSize(12)
        str=""
        for z=1,#keyVal do
            str=str..string.byte(string.sub(keyVal,z,z)).." "
        end
        text(str,WIDTH/2,HEIGHT-100)
        text("size  "..#keyVal,WIDTH/2,HEIGHT-50)
    end
end

function keyboard(key)
    keyVal=key  
end

@dave1707 - interesting, most of the simpler ones are size 4. It’s when you get the family pictures with images of up to four people that the numbers go up. Also the numbers in those cases repeat - say two mums and two kids give two sets of 4 numbers - I think this must be coordinate data from vector images and may be due to different layers in a vector image.

@Simeon - just a quick question regarding emojis. The emojis included in Codea I assume are provided by Apple - are they licensed and require restricted use? I have used them in projects as emojis, I have converted them to sprites for use in projects and will probably pass on projects and code in the forum or to family. Also I am considering using them in printed output which might get wide distribution. So where do you, myself and fellow users stand with relation to use in all these outlets?

Emoji’s are characters in a font and so use of them is covered by the licence that comes with the font. Most fonts have a clause that essentially says that normal use (such as printing a document containing them) is within the licence and not a breach of copyright. If you can’t find the licence for the exact font you’re using then you can easily find alternative fonts that do have an explicit licence.

@dave1707 the byte length of an emoji will be different to its unicode length because the code points used in an emoji will typically be more than one byte in length.

My utf8 library can cope with Emoji.

@LoopSpace - thanks for the feedback. Interesting, so if I sent a text/emoji file for printing to the forum members would that be like sending a letter with a purchased font? I have converted emoji characters from Codea into sprites and used them in an image I would like to print or allow forum members to print if they were interested. All may become clearer in the near future if I can finish my app that uses the images.

@Bri_G they are Apple’s emoji font but Apple has an odd reputation around enforcing their use in apps

If you use Apple emoji in your app they generally approve it, but I’ve heard of cases where apps were rejected for using Apple emoji as some of the primary UI elements (e.g., on buttons). It’s a tricky case

I think if you are allowing someone to author a document or image using Apple emoji in your app then that’s perfectly fine — it’s like shipping a text editor with emoji support. E.g., the text tool in Procreate allows you to put Apple emoji on your artwork, and Apple is fine with this use

@Simeon - thanks for that, the primary use is in a project written in Codea but it could include a hard copy printed out - difficult to describe briefly at this stage not necessary. I could restrict it to electronic versions generated by Codea and included in the forum. Need to give it a little bit of thought before going forward. Going to complete the project anyway - personal use shouldn’t be an issue with any copyright.
Thanks again.