Re: Microsoft patents emoticons!

From: Last2Know (grokkalot_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/26/05 

Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:10:27 -0500

On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:24:55 +0000, Wayne C. Morris wrote:

> In article <pan.2005.07.24.19.31.30.451775@yahoo.com>,
> Last2Know <grokkalot@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:24:43 +0000, Wayne C. Morris wrote:
>>
>> > I didn't read the whole thing, but according to the abstract at the top,
>> > they're not patenting text emoticons; they're patenting a way to create &
>> > send custom *graphical* emoticons.
>>
>> There are already lots of web based discussion boards with that
>> feature. What is the new technique Microsoft proposes?
>
> Microsoft proposes letting the *writer* control how the emoticons in his
> message will be displayed graphically on everyone else's screens. When you
> read a message from Tom, you'll see Tom's personal emoticons; when you read
> a message from ***, you'll see ***'s emoticons; when you send messages to
> Tom & ***, they'll see your emoticons. I haven't heard of any web forums
> that let you do that.
>
> On web forums, it's the admin who chooses how the emoticon graphics will
> look, maybe even a different set for each display theme. But when you read
> messages posted by Tom, ***, and Harry, they'll all be displayed on your
> screen using the same set of site- or theme-specific emoticons; Tom cannot
> control how the emoticons appear when you read his message.

The nature of the WWW is the person controlling the http
server controls, in a sense, all the content of the website,
though they may allow other people to add stuff (such as
the discussion board). But from a technological point of
view, what is different in the new proposal from my authoring
an HTML or SVG or SMIL2 document and sending it to you?

>
> Many web forums also allow users to have avatars and sigs, but those are
> nothing like emoticons. You can only have one avatar and one sig in a
> message, and they're always displayed in the same relative position
> beside/above/below your message. You can't use them to express anger in
> one sentence and humor in the next.
>
> Even if it were already possible for people to create & use personalized
> emoticon graphics in messages that they write, it would still be possible
> for Microsoft to invent & patent a different technique that accomplishes
> the same task.

Sure. And I'm explicitly asking about the details of their new technique...
Is it basically an extension to some existing MIME or W3C format?