This is another example of a place where the AP spec could delegate this to FEPs, ideally with a mechanism for allowing servers to signal which they support, and which they prefer.
It’s a shame an FEP-style process wasn’t standardised along with the AP spec. Because then a lot of the deadlocks in the drafting discussions could have been resolved by delegating them to FEPs, allowing a lot of dead wood and pet preferences to be pruned out of the draft. If there’s anything I’d add to the agenda for new Social Web Working Group, it’s formally standardising the FEP process.
They’re pretty common on the web in general, but this isn’t a good argument for hardcoding one approach to them in the HTTP spec. Again, emoji reactions are something much better handled in FEPs. Why? A few reasons, including;
- They are non-essential to federation between two or more social web servers.
- There are plenty of conceivable use cases for AP federation where they would be surplus to requirement.
- They would add avoidable complexity to the core AP spec.
But the most important reason is that there are bound to be a range of ways to implement the federation of emoji reactions, different emoji sets that can be used and so on. If there is disagreement about the best approach, or new approaches emerge, more than one emoji reaction FEP can be defined. Implementers are free to choose which one(s) they want to support, while remaining AP-compliant.