##Quick poll to start with:
Do you see these 20 symbols:
๐ฆ๐บ ๐จ๐ฆ ๐จ๐ญ ๐จ๐ณ ๐ฉ๐ช ๐ช๐ธ ๐ซ๐ท ๐ฌ๐ง ๐ฎ๐ฑ ๐ฎ๐น
๐ฏ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ฐ๐ท ๐ณ๐ด ๐ณ๐ต ๐ต๐ธ ๐ถ๐ฆ ๐ท๐บ ๐ธ๐ธ ๐บ๐ธ
and the 5 tags of this topic as flags?
- yes, all of them
- some of them
- no, I only see letters or strange symbols
- depends on which device I use (FP1/FP2/computer)
0 voters
##What is this?
These are so called Regional Indicator Symbols, a set of country flags encoded from the following 26 alphabetic unicode characters:
๐ฆ ๐ง ๐จ ๐ฉ ๐ช ๐ซ ๐ฌ ๐ญ ๐ฎ ๐ฏ ๐ฐ ๐ฑ ๐ฒ ๐ณ ๐ด ๐ต ๐ถ ๐ท ๐ธ ๐น ๐บ ๐ป ๐ผ ๐ฝ ๐พ ๐ฟ
Adding two of them together creates a country flag. e.g. ๐ฉ+ ๐ช = ๐ฉ๐ช
, ๐ซ + ๐ท = ๐ซ๐ท
and ๐ณ+ ๐ฑ = ๐ณ๐ฑ
.
##Why should I care?
We could start using them in this forum to tag non-english topics instead of adding :nl:, , :no:, โฆ in the topic title.
##Why?
The advantages of using them as tags would be:
- You can easily display all topics of the same language by simply clicking on the tag.
- You can mute all topics in languages you donโt understand
- You can follow all topics in a language that you can speak to make sure your fellow countrymen who donโt speak english get help.
- If something changes with the encoding of the symbol we can simply rename the tag. Now when something changes we have to manually rename all topics that use country flags or else we get stuck with lots of topics that start with "
instead of โ
โ.
##Then why donโt we use them already?
The disadvantages of these unicode flags are:
- It depends on your platform, browser and installed fonts whether you can see these symbols as flags. An update to the forum software wonโt fix symbols that donโt display properly. (At least not yet)
- As opposed to other tags you canโt mention these like this: #
๐ฎ๐น
. But thatโs probably not something that will be dearly missed. - You canโt tag a topic by simply typing letters and symbols, but have to copy-paste the actual flag symbol from somewhere. (e.g. this Wikipedia Article under โList of current emoji flag sequencesโ.
- Switching from the old system to the flag-tags system would mean weโd have to again manually rename & tag all non-english topics. But it would be the last time.
##So do you think we should do the switch?
- Yes, this is cool.
- Yes, if someone explains to me how to be able to display all the flags on all my devices
- No, because I donโt see the flags and also donโt want to update the OS on the device I use to browse this forum.
- No, this is dumb.
0 voters