Feature Request: Allow Unicode symbols such as flags

[Anuskuss]

I don't know if this has to happen in Kodi or the addon but it would be nice if I could use flags in my m3u playlist.

[phunkyfish]

I would imagine it would require both. Do you mean flags as in country flags?

[kekukui]

Regional identifiers are defined in ISO 3166-1 as follows:

• flag image
• 2-letter alpha
• 3-letter alpha
• number

In unicode this is implemented as code pairs which produce an image of the 2 letter alpha (not image of flag)

https://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/iso3166
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Indicator_Symbol

To display the actual flag, the platforms unicode implementation would have to contain flag images instead of 2 letter alpha images. Supporting unicode will get you an image of 2 letter country codes. If you want actual flags, you might have to replace the platforms unicode library. The addon cannot supply flag images, only support unicode. But the 2 letter alpha is sufficient to distinguish national origin.

Flag images reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
https://www.countryflags.com/en/
https://www.countryflags.com/en/emoji-overview

[phunkyfish]

Kodi supports Unicode alright but as to how I read or pass that to Kodi I have no idea I’m afraid.

[kekukui]

ok I have run some tests on Windows & Linux. This is what I found:

• You must choose the Arial font in Settings / Interface or there will be no unicode support in any addon
• Every time you change the skin, the font will be reset and you will have to choose Arial again
• When Arial is enabled, international language character sets are correctly displayed in IPTVsimple
• It appears that all Kodi addons will display the following characters correctly (example)

∆ (2206)
Ӆ (04C5)
ֆ (0586)

• The following characters are NOT displayed correctly in Kodi even if the platform unicode library supports them (example)

֎ (058E)
😁 (1F601) emoji
🇦🇮 (1F1E6+1F1EA) country code or flag image (depends on unicode library)

I therefore conclude that the missing support for emoji & country code is a Kodi bug, not a problem with IPTVsimple. I think the Arial font in Kodi may need to be updated because (0586) and (058E) both appear in the Character Map for Arial on the Windows platform but only (0586) will display in Kodi.

[phunkyfish]

Nice. Can you give an example M3U entry that works with Unicode?

Do any of the flags work?

[kekukui]

Can you give an example M3U entry that works with Unicode?

https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/index.m3u

Do any of the flags work?

No. In order to see any kind of regional identifier which is supported by unicode, Kodi needs to support that first. I am just pointing out that IPTVsimple does not need to be modified to support unicode. I know there are some Windows apps that dont support unicode even though the OS supports it. And some terminal applications on Linux (such as "vi") dont support unicode. So I modified other Kodi addons and found that those example characters which did not work will not be rendered on screen in any Kodi addon. I think there is nothing you can do to fix the issue here: We already have unicode support in IPTVsimple, but Kodi only has a partial implementation. The proof that we have unicode support is when you see oriental alphabets in channel names rendered on screen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_(Unicode)

This is working in IPTVsimple on LibreELEC with all of the channels I tested, and it works in the YouTube addon (if your skin font is Arial based.) The bottom line is, Kodi lacks support for the subset of unicode which includes emoji & regional identifiers. If those characters appear in some addon source text that will be rendered on screen, they will all be rendered as a .notdef glyph (which represents valid unicode characters that cannot be rendered by the selected font.) The .notdef symbol used by Kodi's "Arial" font is a white vertical rectangle ▯ (25AF). But the rendering of unicode characters from non-latin alphabets is working in IPTVsimple, so we do support unicode here. The problem appears to be in Kodis fonts and/or unicode implementation. I can see why users think we dont support unicode when Estuary's default font does not even render some alphabets correctly. And we need to see some support in Kodi/Estuary for unicode regional identifiers before we can debate whether those identifiers should be a country code or a flag. Whoever fixes that issue in Kodi/Estuary can also add support for emoji (which is needed in Kodi because its allowed in YouTube video titles & descriptions.)

[phunkyfish]

This is a really good explanation. Thanks.

[dagwieers]

Yup, we have this on our wishlist as well. Would be nice to have emojis/icons for things like geo-blocked content or list-items that are being "followed" or tagged as "watch later".