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Unicode Consortium Looks At Symbols For Allergies
AmiMoJo writes: A proposal (PDF) submitted by a Google engineer to the Unicode Consortium asks that food allergies get their own emojis and be added to the standard. The proposal suggests the addition of peanuts, soybeans, buckwheat, sesame seeds, kiwi fruit, celery, lupin beans, mustard, tree nuts, eggs, milk products and gluten. According to TNW: "This proposal will take a little longer to become reality — it's still in very early stages and needs to be reviewed by the Unicode Consortium before it can move forward, but it'll be a great way for those with allergies to quickly express them."
And they have clearly passed it.
But let’s keep going and see what happens.
Some people say that food allergies are the same as they were 20 years ago. I just don't believe it.
If I send my kid to school with a PB&J sandwhich in his lunch, "zero tolerance" comes into play and he will be suspended immediately with no recourse whatsoever (because no tolerance) and will have a negative record that will hinder his acceptance to college (because "suspension" from peanut butter sandwich).
When I was in school, NOBODY had any of these food problems, whether nuts, gluten, soy, whatever, so I just don't believe these allergies have always been a problem.
If there's one thing that I've come to learn that I'm very allergic to, it's systemd. I do hope that as part of this work, they add a symbol that could be used to help warn those of us with systemd allergies that systemd may be present. Like this warning symbol could be shown on the Debian website, or at the very beginning of an installation of Debian 8 (or later). At least if we're alerted to the presence of systemd, we can take steps to protect ourselves, like by installing OpenBSD instead of Debian.
This doesn't seem like an intrinsically bad idea; things like the GHS hazard pictograms, DIN 4844-2, ISO 3864, TSCA marks, and similar such things seem like perfectly reasonable additions to Unicode(some of them are already there).
What seems like more of a problem is the idea that the Unicode Consortium is out there fishing for ideas. A project of that scope has more than enough backlog to work through; what possible benefit could there be in putzing around internally with ideas for stuff that hasn't been codified by any relevant user groups, standards bodies, experts, national standards, etc? If they think that they have free time for that, they probably aren't looking hard enough at the stew of natural languages and commonly used symbols out there.
The original round of unicode-ified emoji, while puerile and obnoxious, were at least a solid instance of one of the Consortium's functions: the symbols were in wide use; but saddled with a horrible mess of legacy encoding schemes and general awfulness, so the only thing to do was wade in, hand out code points, and hope that the legacy systems could be burned to the ground as soon as possible. Same reason why parts of Unicode have substantial amounts of duplication, single characters that should be represented as composites, and so on; because various legacy standards had to die.
Here, though, there is no obvious existing standard being modeled on, nor any interoperability issue being solved. If somebody wants Unicode to have a picture of absolutely everything; maybe they should go work on graphics format standards.
I'm allergic to emojis. I hate them with a passion I usually reserve for bad drivers.
There's already a snowflake symbol........
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Come on, allergy symbols? Fuck off social justice crowd. All these special snowflake allergies these days.
The new allergy symbol should be stick figure of a person with its head in its hands, like it was about to sneeze, or like it was resigning to news of the upcoming UTF-64 standard.
Absolute nonsense. Next time I recompile Linux, it will have support for ASCII only, maybe add EBCDIC if I'm feeling energetic at the time.
Unless this guy is a doctor, its just another case of people going outside of their area of expertise. This kind of symbology probably should be developed by an organization like the World Health Organization who would consider things like the univerality of the symbols, cultural sensitivity, range of allergies etc.
Wait, Slashdot actually knows what Unicode is?
I hate decyphering hieroglyphics. I propose that the unicode for "I have peanut allergies" should be the text string "I have peanut allergies."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
... someone will send you an email which will be turned into Mojibake and you'll discover that your correspondent is allergic to the Euro, the exclamation mark, the pound symbol, and to the Hebrew letter Gimel.
Me, bent over, clutching my abdomen, while Al Gore tries to stop the greenhouse gases from my butt?
There's a reason Slashdot does not use it
At least some of these symbols ARE in common use already, often printed so small that you don't notice them if you're not looking for them. For example, I never knew that the gluten-free symbol existed until my wife was diagnosed with celiac disease (gluten intolerance) . Now that I know what to look for, I see the symbol quite often; sometimes on packaged foods and sometimes on menus.
Checking a few of the products in my pantry right now, I see that it's about evenly split between the symbol and the words "gluten free". Fritos for example, use the words. Chex cereal has the words and a _different_ symbol. Standardization would make shopping easier, faster and safer.
That said, standardizing WHERE on the package this information is found would be the most useful. It's most often listed immediately after the standard ingredient listing, but there is a lot of variation so we have to carefully examine all around the whole package looking for one of the two pictorial symbols, or the words "gluten free", or the circled GF symbol, or the words "gluten free". The most common is the most useful - an icon of a wheat stalk with the crossed out circle (similar to the "no smoking" symbol).
If Unicode really wants to get allegic symbols into their collection it would end up with a torrent
Not only allergy to systemd but also
... and so on ... and so forth ...
* allergy to stupid people
* allergy to politicians
* allergy to pedophiles
* allergy to loud music
* allergy to obnoxious behavior
* allergy to insanity
Adding random concepts as characters seems weird for alphabetical languages, where there is a limited character set used to form many words.
https://modelviewculture.com/p...
The above article shows how ridiculous it is to have these emojis in the Unicode standard when they are missing letters in multiple eastern alphabets.
If only parents exposed their little children to these, in small amounts, while they were young, they would not be allergic to them. People became widely allergic to these things when scientists told parents not to give children anything that might cause an allergic reaction, which in turned, causes that allergic reaction to be worse.
The allergens listed are all common in children. The most common allergen for adults is shellfish, which isn't mentioned in this (apparently short-sighted) proposal.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Why do you need a different symbol for each allergy? Why not just one for allergies in general?
Simple. When you're in Germany, write it it German. If you're in China, write it in Chinese.
Did I mention I hate hieroglyphics?
The idea that we can create a universal language that everybody will understand by abandoning language and simply making a recognizable symbol for every single concept that anybody might ever want to communicate is stupid.
However, if that actually is your proposal, there is a simple solution: let's write everything in Chinese characters. They already did that. And if you don't think that Chinese characters work as universally recognizable symbols, well, that's just your western-centric prejudice. They've evolved those characters for thousands of years; you're pretty arrogant to think you can do better in a decade or two.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Just please, if this happens, don't let anyone claim sodium caseinate is a non-dairy ingredient! Modified, shmodified, I've almost had to go to the ER from the pain that shit caused. (Milk protein allergy)
Why not create symbols that can represent entire words and phrases?
That way, instead of typing out sentences like this, I could just pick a few hieroglyphs from my 9,000 character keyboard, and be done with it. Such a system could become universal, changing all written languages into one singular, commonly understood one.
Of course, the spoken languages would have to be different, because in this day and age, it makes sense for people to not be able to communicate with each other.
The problem with pictograms is they don't mean squat to someone who doesn't already know what they mean. If that weren't the case, Egyptian Hieroglyphics would still be in active use...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Oh, and Rap. In general. There needs to be a clear warning symbol for that too. So I can avoid any establishment that inflicts such things on its patrons. Perhaps one specifically for Kanye West as well.
You can become violently allergic to practically ANYTHING. (The immune system, in each individual, creates a large number of clones of cells making different antibodies by pseudo-randomly editing the genome making the antibody, kills off the ones that recognize the infant body, and amplifies the clones recognizing new stuff that appeared at the same time the body experiences damage.)
A few bad reactions to a few particular foods got a lot of attention - and overreaction. Which ones got the attention was mostly a matter of chance. So now the clueless bureaucrats are taking extreme measures against the handful of allergens that got the press, and the rest are completely off their radar.
They have zero tolerance for peanuts.
- Do they have zero tolerance for shellfish? (Restaurants in Silicon Valley were very careful about allergies when I first moved here - because one had been informed that a customer had a shellfish allergy, fed her something containing shrimp, and she died.)
- Do they have zero tolerance for milk? (Some milk reactions are an enzyme deficiency, but some are an allergy, which can be deadly. Also: a protein in cow's milk increases the risk of Multiple Sclerosis).
- Do they have zero tolerance for tree nuts?
- Do they have zero tolerance for wheat?
- Do they have zero tolerance for honey?
- Do they have zero tolerance for corn? (It would be convenient for ME if they did - my corn allergy isn't QUITE to full-blown anaphylactic shock level, yet, but it IS to the "projectile vomiting" and "three days of flu-like symptoms" level. But I won't try to stop others from enjoying corn.)
- Do they have zero tolerance for eggs?
- Do they have zero tolerance for fish?
And that's just the COMMON food allergies.
If they had zero tolerance for every food allergen that had caused anaphyliaxis, they'd have zero tolerance for FOOD.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Except many Chinese can't read (or write) a significant fraction of Chinese characters, and no one knows all of them.
My point exactly.
The whole reason we abandoned hieroglyphic representations of language was so that we wouldn't have to learn 80,000 hanzi.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If you don't like rap, that probably means you are a RACIST. #blacklivesmatter #420killcopserryday
It's OK to hate Nickelback, though.
stupid
It's pretty damn scary to witness someone endure an anaphylactic reaction to a food allergen as they desperately hope that the epinephrine injection will save their life.
Better global labeling of food allergens will help eliminate the risk. I like the idea of standard labels and icons. This unicode idea is a good one -- we should support it.
An even better solution would be figure out what is causing the increase in food allergens and fix that problem. Until then, yet another unicode standard seems helpful.
If you'd like to learn more about food allerges, check out https://www.foodallergy.org/ (FARE - Food Allergy Research and Education)
This is just like making fancy top level domain names like "fish" or calling security vulnerabilities "Shellshock". A professional engineering standard is ruined with cute hipster stuff.
WTF? Not like it's rare or anything.
This is, perhaps, the most valuable proposal I've ever seen for adding something to Unicode. Especially the Kanye West part.
What about those with allergies to medicines, such as penicillin? Those seem equally critical, yet not mentioned.
This, from a person with a serious penicillin allergy, and one tree nut, and some shellfish, not to mention intolerance of milk and bell peppers. I'm going to need a giant string at this point...
That's for sure! And the fear is strangely selective. I have a difficult time understanding a person who is both a hygiene fanatic and a slob. Out of fear, she insists on ridiculous hygiene measures such as washing a bar of soap with liquid soap after it's been dropped on the floor of the shower stall, but she routinely leaves dirty dishes all over the house.
It's similar with driving. Insists on doing the driving herself because she doesn't trust anyone else to do it, then gets stressed out and starts cutting other drivers off, speeding, tailgating, and lane hopping. She hates the middle lane, feels trapped when cars are on both sides, so she hops from right lane to left and back to the right, making double lane changes if on a 6 lane street. If she sees road construction or a traffic jam ahead, she instantly takes the next turn, and never mind whether that takes her further from her destination.
She's also afraid of crime. Has 2 deadbolts on each door. I pointed out that this could be dangerous if there is a fire and she needs to get out quick, doesn't have time to fumble about hunting for keys and keyholes. But she has not made any changes there, remains much more afraid of criminals than fires.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It would be as useful (possibly more so) to have icons to say something does NOT contain allergens. i.e. gluten free, lactose free etc. People buying gluten free food often look for a gluten free symbol (e.g. this one) and only then scan the ingredients to look in more detail. So for every code they reserve for an allergen, there should be another code for the opposite - free from that allergen.
What would the point of this be? In general, Unicode standardizes codepoints and other abstract properties of characters, but it doesn't standardize how the character looks. U+0067 is "g", the "LATIN SMALL LETTER G", but exactly how that looks depends on which font you're using. Or more relevant, many emoji are very different between Android and iOS. I'd think that symbols for food allergies need to look the same everywhere if the point is for them to be used as warnings on food packaging, menus, etc.
You can be allergic to just about anything, so they will need to add a LOT to this unicode table.
Hell you can even be allergic to water !
Food Ideas - http://foodsideas.com/
So does the emoji for sheep mean you're allergic to mutton, or that you're now a member of a fraternity, or that you have insomnia?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I like the idea of standard labels and icons.
Only the trolls are objecting to that idea per se. Ignore them.
The real argument is that it is the Unicode Consortium's job to define the encoding of existing symbols and not to try and invent new ones in a field where they have no expertise. As others have pointed out, Unicode defines codes for abstract descriptions of symbols - they have no control over the rendering. If you're going to have international allergy symbols its fairly critical that (a) they're based on sound medical judgement, (b) their actual appearance is standardised and (c) there's a publicity campaign to get them recognised, ideally tied in with regional laws such as food hygiene training and workplace posters.
Once the symbols are known then, yes, it would be a jolly good idea for Unicode to assign them codes.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Being a character implies a bunch of other stuff such as different graphical representations (fonts) for the same semantic symbol and a collation ordering. This doesn't make sense for a load of stuff that's now in unicode. If these are meant to be glyphs with well-defined visual representations, then they don't belong in a font with their representation dependent on the font designer's whim. If they're not characters used in any language, then what are the collation rules for them? What order do dog-poop and contains-gluten sort, and how does this vary between locales?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... allergy to Anonymous Coward.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The idea that we can create a universal language that everybody will understand by abandoning language and simply making a recognizable symbol for every single concept that anybody might ever want to communicate is stupid.
IKEA already did that. Creating 80+ local language instructions were a pain and an expense, so now all of them, or almost all of them, are completely comic-strip-like without a single line of text.
That said, the goal isn't to create a symbol for every single concept. We've been successful in creating icons for many things that save real money in not having local words when a symbol will do.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://athome.kimvallee.com/20...
http://webstore.ansi.org/safet...
"But I don't want to have to learn all of these things!"
You don't need to. Simply print off the local-language version of the ones you need and place it in the area it is needed. For example, laundry care instructions on the wall in your laundry room, or tableware symbols in the kitchen.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Your belief that you can solve the problems of a universal language by abandoning written language and just invent symbols easily and trivially recognized by anybody is :), but in the real world :/. :( and memorizing thousands of symbols isn't really going to make the world simpler
Symbols just aren't as culturally independent as you think
About all I can say is >:P
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Are there locale-specific ways to refer to an allergy?
Why do we need a font instead of a simple image?
Although it may not be necessary to create allergy symbols, the existence of a similar-looking glyph is not a valid reason why. In Unicode, each code point corresponds to a particular abstract character, not glyph, so the snowflake symbol cannot be used for a food allergy symbol even if they look identical, because U+2744 means "snowflake" and not "food allergy."
For example, Greek capital letter delta (U+0394) and the mathematical symbol delta (U+2206) usually look almost the same, but are completely different concepts. They alphabetize differently, are searchable differently, and are not interchangeable.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The evolution of those characters was heavily influenced by the media and writing tools of the time, which remained stable for thousands of years. Now we can make a mountain that actually looks like a mountain.
But the symbols we use don't look like what they are. They are symbols that you just have to know the meaning. For example, right now I'm looking at several symbols. One is four concentric arcs of a quarter circle. This means "wifi is receiving". Does that look like a radio wave? No. Another is a vertical line, with an X through it, and on the right side, the top and bottom of the x and the I connected, forming rightward-pointing triangles. Does that look like a picture of a "Bluetooth Connection" to you? Next to that is a horizontal rectangle, with slightly curved left and right sides, with a symbol in it that could be a stylized Pac-man with a tail, or else maybe a stylized rocket. This symbol means "battery plugged in to charger."
In fact, at the top of the browser there's a symbol that looks a little like the handwritten form of the kanji for "jin" inside a dark green rectangle. That symbol, in fact, means "you're on slashdot".
There's a dozen other symbols in my line of sight. Not a single one of these symbols looks even slightly like what it is.
(I guess you don't drive since horse riding has evolved for thousands of years and people would be pretty arrogant to think they could improve on that.)
Yes, I ride horses. There has been a little evolution of riding since the invention of the stirrup in the middle ages... but not much. If you're saying that cars are a better way of travel than horses-- yes, that's my point. Writing words is a better way of communicating than playing pictionary.
BTW the Chinese ideographical character set is not called "Kanji".
It is when it's used in Japan. Yes, I do know that Japanese is complicated, and that the Chinese word is only one of several readings of a given kanji. This is a /. comment, not a dissertation on writing systems.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
IKEA already did that. Creating 80+ local language instructions were a pain and an expense, so now all of them, or almost all of them, are completely comic-strip-like without a single line of text.
A comic-strip depiction of how to put something together is much different than a single symbol standing for the entire process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is a marvelous example of how these symbol things should work. The Japanese washing instruction label at the top of the page contains four symbols, NONE of which match anything shown later as the standard. The closest is the "do not wash", but the label has a red X and the standard is black.
The "natural drying" icons are not very obvious, either. The "line dry" kinda looks like "put in an envelope". The "drip dry" looks like "hang over the heater vent." "Tumble dry normal" looks for all the world like "you need to keep close watch (both eyes) on the dryer or the clothes might go up in flames."
"But I don't want to have to learn all of these things!" You don't need to. Simply print off the local-language version of the ones you need and place it in the area it is needed.
Exactly what would be the "area it is needed" for a list of the icons that stand for food allergies? Most people don't do laundry outside the laundry room, but people tend to eat stuff anywhere they are. Where would I find a translation for "peanut symbol" to "I have a deadly serious peanut allergy" when I'm sitting next to someone at a Laker's game with a bag of peanuts and they're busy pointing to a peanut tattooed on their arm? Or would I assume a peanut tattoo means they like them alot and here, have one?
Food Ideas - http://foodsideas.com/
At first I was thinking "this is dumb" but now that I think about it, it may be good for kids. Especially youngsters into trading lunches etc. Sure we all survived when we were kids without it, but with the ever-growing population of stupidity and inadequate parenting... this may be a good idea. At least it gives kids a chance.