Why are smileys counted as "images" in posts?

[Jonathan Busby]

(07-25-2020 06:33 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  Technically, they are images:

I know that, but the glyphs used to display characters in a specific
font in the forums are also technically images

( EDIT : I know the above statement is a little bit inaccurate. AFAIK, for smileys at least, the HP Museum web server has to transmit the binary image data of the smileys to the client web browser whereas eg. Unicode UTF-8 text has much lower bandwidth requirements, although complex Unicode glyphs and images can also put a higher load on the client web browser. )

(07-26-2020 05:06 PM)BruceH Wrote:  [snip] they display as '?' in the actual post.

(Maybe that's for the best!)

I know some people may feel that smileys are irritating to the eyes, but I need them as I'm an Aspie
and I'm always afraid that my external emotional affect, such as it is in text, may be misinterpreted
as an insult when no insult was intended and I was just being neutral It's hard enough for me to read
others' external emotional affects IRL not to mention online

Regards,

Jonathan