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Flagtastic Tags

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#1

##Quick poll to start with:

Do you see these 20 symbols:

🇦🇺 🇨🇦 🇨🇭 🇨🇳 🇩🇪 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇮🇱 🇮🇹
🇯🇵 🇰🇳 🇰🇷 🇳🇴 🇳🇵 🇵🇸 🇶🇦 🇷🇺 🇸🇸 🇺🇸

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)

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##What is this?
These are so called Regional Indicator Symbols, a set of country flags encoded from the following 26 alphabetic unicode characters:
🇦 🇧 🇨 🇩 🇪 🇫 🇬 🇭 🇮 🇯 🇰 🇱 🇲 🇳 🇴 🇵 🇶 🇷 🇸 🇹 🇺 🇻 🇼 🇽 🇾 🇿

Adding two of them together creates a country flag. e.g. 🇩+ 🇪 = 🇩🇪, 🇫 + 🇷 = 🇫🇷 and 🇳+ 🇱 = 🇳🇱.

##Why should I care?
We could start using them in this forum to tag non-english topics instead of adding :nl:, :es:, :no:, … 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 don’t understand
  • You can follow all topics in a language that you can speak to make sure your fellow countrymen who don’t 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 ":flag_fr: instead of “:fr:”.

##Then why don’t 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 won’t fix symbols that don’t display properly. (At least not yet)
  • As opposed to other tags you can’t mention these like this: #🇮🇹. But that’s probably not something that will be dearly missed.
  • You can’t 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 “List of current emoji flag sequences”.
  • Switching from the old system to the flag-tags system would mean we’d have to again manually rename & tag all non-english topics. But it would be the last time. :slight_smile:

##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 don’t see the flags and also don’t want to update the OS on the device I use to browse this forum.
  • No, this is dumb.

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#3

I only see 10. The other 10 display as letters in boxes for me. It is probably because I haven’t updated my OSX in a long time and am very reluctant to do so.
On my FP2 I see all 20.

#5

This is from my mobile Firefox, I have emoji one installed on my FP1 (search the forum for more info):

Screenshot_2017-02-21-20-16-44.png540×960 81.1 KB

On my PC with Windows and Firefox I don’t see the flags. I believe there are emoji font plugins though.

2 Likes
#6

On my FP2 it works with Firefox, not with Lightning.

1 Like
#7

This is a wiki post.
Please add your device + OS + browser + special configurations and signal whether the emojis work. If you find a way to make them work please add that as an extra entry.

##Legend:
:flag_black: (:flag_black:)…all flags work
:flag_white: (:flag_white:)…some flags work
:x: (:x:)…flags don’t work
:grey_question: (:grey_question:)…no reports yet

##FP1

  • #kitkat
  • Firefox
  • Kola Nut 1.8.7
  • Firefox :x:
    • +EmojiOne :flag_black:
  • Older OS Version :grey_question:

##FP2

  • FP OS 1.12.0 / Open OS 17.01
  • Chrome :flag_black:
  • Firefox/IceCat Mobile :flag_black:
  • Lightning :x:
  • Lightning 4.4.1 :flag_black:
  • Older FP (Open) OS
  • Firefox/IceCat Mobile 45.6.0 :flag_black:
  • Sailfish :grey_question:
  • Ubuntu :grey_question:

##Linux Computer

  • Manjaro 16.10
  • Jandex :x:
  • Fedora 25
  • Firefox 51.0.1 (64-bits) :flag_black:
  • Debian 7.6 LTS (virtual test machine - no need to use it for this forum)
  • Firefox ESR 45.7.0 :x:
  • Debian 9.0 Stretch
  • Firefox 51 (64 bit) :flag_black:
  • Chromium 55 (64 bit) :x:
  • Seamonkey 2.46 :x:
  • Vivaldi 1.4 :x:
  • Ubuntu 14.04
  • Firefox 51.0.1 :x:
  • Ubuntu 16.04
  • Firefox 51.0.1 :x:
  • Ubuntu Web-browser App :x:

##macOS

  • 10.12 - Firefox, Chrome, Safari :flag_black:
  • 10.11 - Firefox, Chrome, Safari :flag_black:
  • 10.9.5 - Firefox and Safari :flag_white:

##Windows Computer

  • Windows 10 1607
  • Firefox 51 :x:
    • +EmojiFontPlugin :grey_question:
  • Chrome :flag_white:
  • Microsoft Edge 38 :x:
  • Internet Explorer 11 :x:
  • Windows 7 (64-bits)
  • Firefox 51.0.1 (32-bits) :flag_black:
  • Palemoon 27.1.1 (64-bit) :x:

##More Stuff

#8

DeepinBildschirmfoto20170221204844.png880×560 34.9 KB

Not so cool…
But the idea is good!

1 Like
#9

@it-was-me: What’s your setup?

#10

I don’t know how to setup this. I’m on a Linux system.

1 Like
#11

I meant, what OS (which Linux version) and what browser do you use? So we can add it to the wiki above.

#12

current Manjaro with Yandex Browser

1 Like
#13

On my desktop with Fedora 25
Firefox 51.0.1 (64-bits) (:flag_black:)
Opera 12.16 (:x:).

1 Like
#15

Works fine on my Open OS FP2 with Firefox.
Does not work on my Kubuntu 16.10 with Firefox 51 (I block cookies and similar stuff so it might be because of that).

#16

Ubuntu 16.04, Firefox 51:

#17

Firefox on my FP2 shows the flags. IE10 on Windows 8.1 shows only the respective letters (ES, FR, IT, NL, DE). But I think showing the respective letters instead of flags would be OK, too.

What I wish if this is introduced is an instruction how to mute topics in foreign languages.

1 Like
#18

Good idea. Here it is. If and when we introduce this I’ll make a post explaining this as well as hopefully some ways to get the flags to show on different systems.

First tap on a tag. No matter if you see it as a flag or just letter-symbols, you’ll get to the tag view, where you will see the flag:

You won’t see the “rename tag” and “delete tag” buttons, but besides that is a button to choose the notification level:

Setting it to “regular” is probably best if it’s a language you don’t speak.
Otherwise you won’t even be notified if you are mentioned or quoted.

I’m not a hundred 100% sure about multilanguage threads, but I believe watching or tracking one tag outweighs muting (or “regularing”) another one.

So e.g. if a thread is tagged with :de: and :it: and you follow :de: but muted :it: you’ll still get notified. Whereas if you don’t explicitly follow :gb: a thread tagged with :it: and :gb: will be silenced for you.

1 Like
#19

Ubuntu 16.04, Firefox 51.0.1 does not display flags for these symbol combinations.

#20

Just execute this and reload the page:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:eosrei/fonts
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fonts-emojione-svginot

Source

p.s. if you don’t like the font and want to go back:

sudo apt remove fonts-emojione-svginot
2 Likes
#21

I simply used

sudo apt install fonts-emojione

(I’m using Ubuntu 16.10.)

#22

thanks, but it looks it’s not part of the official repos of 16.04

#23

Sadly, no.

It has been introduced with yakkety.

And it is available in zesty, too.

So I guess, that it’s now part of the repositories (for new releases).