# Automatically add a space before the emoji if the user is typing Chinese and uses emoji picker **URL:** \ **Category:** Feature\ **Created:** [2018年三月19日 08:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285 "2018-03-19T08:24:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![snakeninny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/snakeninny/32/115522_2.png) [@snakeninny](https://meta.discourse.org/u/snakeninny)\ **Post date:** [2018年三月19日 08:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/1 "2018-03-19T08:24:03Z")
Hi Discourse team: I have been using Discourse for 4 years and love the modern design and quick update. Thank you! Recently I have noticed some issues in my [forum](http://iosre.com), that in China, we seldom use spaces like you do in English, so basically every emoji from emoji picker is screwed like this: 呵呵:thinking: Which is annoying and confuses most Chinese users. Can you think of a way to improve the Chinese user experience? Thank you! Yinglu ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [2018年三月20日 00:06 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/2 "2018-03-20T00:06:12Z")
Any ideas @j.jaffeux? ---
**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\ **Post date:** [2018年三月20日 01:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/4 "2018-03-20T01:46:32Z")
We half fixed this with: [https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/d2a7a4916abecea389c99ae84de3bd40517b00d9](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/d2a7a4916abecea389c99ae84de3bd40517b00d9) But what we need to do is match the implementation here: [https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/assets/javascripts/pretty-text/engines/discourse-markdown/emoji.js.es6#L154-L156](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/assets/javascripts/pretty-text/engines/discourse-markdown/emoji.js.es6#L154-L156) Which is checking for `isSpace` or `isPunctChar`. ---
**Author:** ![snakeninny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/snakeninny/32/115522_2.png) [@snakeninny](https://meta.discourse.org/u/snakeninny)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月10日 08:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/5 "2018-07-10T08:24:47Z")
Any progress? Got complaints from my users again today ;( ---
**Author:** ![schungx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/schungx/32/70989_2.png) [@schungx](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schungx)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月10日 10:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/6 "2018-07-10T10:15:21Z")
You can do this much simpler by always putting a space before the emoji code when selected from the picker. You can also skip this space if the character immediately before is space. ---
**Author:** ![snakeninny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/snakeninny/32/115522_2.png) [@snakeninny](https://meta.discourse.org/u/snakeninny)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月10日 11:42 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/7 "2018-07-10T11:42:18Z")
Do you mean doing this manually or programmatically? ---
**Author:** ![schungx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/schungx/32/70989_2.png) [@schungx](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schungx)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月10日 14:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/8 "2018-07-10T14:24:18Z")
That will need Discourse core to be modified. Probably somebody can write a simple plugin to do this.. ---
**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月11日 01:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/9 "2018-07-11T01:19:34Z")
We have a few options here: 1. Allow `呵:t_rex:` so `:t_rex:` is an emoji. The problem though is that it is very expensive to detect Chinese per [https://github.com/alsotang/is-chinese/blob/master/ischinese.js](https://github.com/alsotang/is-chinese/blob/master/ischinese.js) so this would add a bunch of extra slowness to the MD engine. 2. Fix it so autocomplete behaves consistently with the way the engine interprets it. Meaning `呵:t` **should not** pop open an emoji window. 3. @schungx suggestion where after autocomplete is done we insert a space prior to emoji if needed. 4. Add a “special mode” into Markdown where it requires no special punctuation between emoji and then `a:t_rex:a` would render a 🦖 a. I feel like the best way forward here is (2) and (4) combined. So: - Out-of-the-box autocomplete is not doing any funny business where it pretends to add an emoji and does not - In Chinese forums where words are just joined we would set `SiteSetting.require_punct_before_emoji = false` (and have autocomplete respect this) @misaka4e21 / @tgxworld what are your thoughts here? ---
**Author:** ![tgxworld](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tgxworld/32/106117_2.png) [@tgxworld](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tgxworld)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月11日 01:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/10 "2018-07-11T01:26:39Z")
Yea I think a locale based site setting is best way to go here. ---
**Author:** ![misaka4e21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@misaka4e21](https://meta.discourse.org/u/misaka4e21)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月11日 06:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/11 "2018-07-11T06:49:59Z")
There are two problems: - (a) If an emoji are chosen from the emoji picker, it will lack for a space before the first colon `:`, not only in Chinese posts, but in English posts as well. Users will get a not rendered a:smile: (`a:smile:`) if they input `a` and then select 😄 (`:smile:`) from the emoji picker. - (b) A colon `:` after a Latin character won’t cause auto-completion, yet a colon after a CJK Unihan character will. It could be solved exactly by (2). To solve (a), (3) should be implemented in the emoji picker, not / not just in auto-completion. (1) and (4) are in different logic. To check if a character is in Chinese or not, we could try: > Though I don’t know whether the regular expression above will provide higher performance. ---
**Author:** ![tgxworld](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tgxworld/32/106117_2.png) [@tgxworld](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tgxworld)\ **Post date:** [2018年七月11日 07:48 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/12 "2018-07-11T07:48:20Z")
I remember going down the regular expression route in the past but that means we carry this giant regexp everywhere we go. For chinese forums, we can just have a site setting that does not require a space before `:` to render emojis. ---
**Author:** ![j.jaffeux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/j.jaffeux/32/60297_2.png) [@j.jaffeux](https://meta.discourse.org/u/j.jaffeux)\ **Post date:** [2019年四月30日 15:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/14 "2019-04-30T15:52:09Z")
@venarius is [UX: Added leading whitespace to emoji picker & inline translation for… by venarius · Pull Request #7429 · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/7429) going to fix this ? ---
**Author:** ![venarius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/venarius/32/133142_2.png) [@venarius](https://meta.discourse.org/u/venarius)\ **Post date:** [2019年四月30日 16:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/15 "2019-04-30T16:46:59Z")
Yes, this will insert a space before an emoji if there isn’t any. ---
**Author:** ![j.jaffeux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/j.jaffeux/32/60297_2.png) [@j.jaffeux](https://meta.discourse.org/u/j.jaffeux)\ **Post date:** [2019年四月30日 16:58 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/automatically-add-a-space-before-the-emoji-if-the-user-is-typing-chinese-and-uses-emoji-picker/83285/16 "2019-04-30T16:58:57Z")