Conversations: Implement pidgin-compatible custom smilies.

[keiyakins]

Pidgin implemented these a decade ago, and there's still no support for them in any mobile clients. https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5627

This is NOT a duplicate of #2122. They're related, but stickers are larger, sent as a message in themselves, and only available in pre-made packs sold by corporations licensed by the client author. Custom smilies are images supplied by the end-user, sent inline, and typically smaller.

[edhelas]

They are actually considered as the same thing as Stickers, so this issue is the same as #2122 afaik.

[licaon-kter]

@keiyakins your pidgin link is about XEP-0231? Then it's a duplicate

[keiyakins]

So, you think people should only be allowed to send images that they paid you for? That's what 'stickers' means.

XEP-0231 is only about the transfer mechanism, the actual use of it is a separate thing. That's like saying this is a duplicate of some other issue because they both involve TCP/IP.

[licaon-kter]

Call them stickers (free or paid), call them custom images, I don't care.

[gamefreak]

I have a fork with support for pidgin style custom emoticons. To note:

• Currently it's hard coded to use the (rather large) pack in use on a jabber server I hang out on.

• It has a format of its own that you would need to convert to.

  I never really felt any need to properly support multiple packs since it was mostly just for the one community but if you ask nicely I might be willing to help you on both points.

[zz-ha-dum]

Why are you not satisfied with the most recent Unicode Emoji set?

Why is send image not a sufficient extension for this use case? Grab a third party tool to act upon typed macros for image insertion?

[zz-ha-dum]

I wouldn't want the endless clutter introdiced by https://movim.eu stickers... for such a tiny, unindexed set of stickers.

Perhaps stickers are best as plugins that send Data URI (Base64)?

[MalevolentGrin]

Perhaps stickers are best as plugins that send Data URI (Base64)?

I'd use that:
https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues/3199

[keiyakins]

Unicode adamently refuses to include things like the trans flag, nonhuman skin colors, etc. Someone else did a good writeup (with an admittedly queer furry slant) https://mutant.tech/info/about/ (I disagree with Dzuk's encoding it as a bunch of PUA characters, I remember the days of encoding hell all too well, but that's why I'm asking for the ability to include custom smilies in messages as an image.)

Data URIs require xhtml messages and rendering. XEP 0231 is a much cleaner implementation of transferring small bits of binary data (such as images) for use in XMPP messages.

[iNPUTmice]

Since this seems to rely on xhtml-im I don’t think this is a good idea to implement.