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Help for sending unicode


PyLily has extensive Unicode support, in both names and messages. It will accept
Unicode input directly over the network using UTF-8 encoding, and also allows 
for unicode-escaped input and output if on a terminal which doesn't allow direct
UTF-8 input or output.

Wide characters such as kanji and emoji are also handled properly, both in line 
editing and in formatting tables or doing line wrapping where the display width 
of the characters matters.

In addition to supporting direct input and output of these characters in UTF-8 
format, PyLily also allows "\uhhhh" and "\Uhhhhhhhh" to be entered to specify a 
Unicode character by its hex value. For example, a user could enter \u203c when 
typing a message and it would be converted to "‼", a double exclamation mark. 
Similarly, a user could enter \U0001f603 to add 😃 (a smiling emoji) to their 
message. The "\u" prefix must always be followed by exactly 4 hex digits, and 
"\U" must always be followed by exactly 8 hex digits, adding leading zeroes if 
necessary.

Emojis can also be entered by name, by surrounding that name with colons. For 
example, the 😃 smiling emoji can be entered as ":smiley:". Available emoji 
names and their corresponding emoji can be looked up using the /emoji command. 
See "/help emoji" for details.

If a user is on a terminal which doesn't properly handle Unicode output, they 
can disable this output with "/set unicode off", in which can any non-ASCII 
characters sent to them will automatically be converted into "\u" or "\U" 
sequences. In this case, emoji specified by name will leave the name surrounded 
by colons as plain text.