Hello

Since version 20220508.1 My Little Forum supports the full range of characters, that are possible with the encoding UTF-8. until then the database tables in the forums MySQL database only supported a limited range of characters, enough for most of the writing systems on planet earth but not for all and also not for the private area in UTF-8.

This private area contains, among other things, the area in which emojis are located. Different to the smiley button bar the forum does not provide an own UI to select emojis for the use in postings. While mobile operating systems offer an easy-to-find UI, this is more or less hidden in desktop operating systems.

The reason for not providing a forums own UI is, that emojis are "a fluid target", which means, that we could provide such a UI but the ever-changing list of available emojis would require constant updates just for the emojis to stay up to date in this regard. Apart from this unwanted requirement, a UI, which is necessarily built with JavaScript and an emoji web font, would alone have approximately half the size of the current software package.

But as stated above, that is not necessary at all. Most of the desktop operating systems provide a native UI for selecting emojis, even these are more or less hidden.

• In Windows (Win 10 v 1709 and later) one can bring up the UI by using the key combination [Win]+[.]. I hope this works not only on english and german layout keyboards.
  
• Also MacOS provides a simple way with the character overview (term only automatically translated).
  
• In Linux the availability is probably distribution-dependent. In Ubuntu a native emoji-picker UI is available with [CTRL]+[.] but this doesn't work in most of the browsers because it works only in GTK-based applications. Sources in the Internet recommends the use of Emote for systemwide emoji support, an Electron based crossplatform emoji picker or browser pugins (in example these for Firefox based or Chromium based browsers). Situation in different Ubuntu derivates (Kubuntu and so on) and other distributions may be different.

So it shouldn't be a problem to use emojis at all.

Tschö, Auge

PS: If you have additional information about how to access emoji support in specific operating systems or OS distributions, different Linux desktops or with other key combinations as documented here, please share it.