Tiny botched-together python script to replace (some) emoji with classic smileys. I have never written python before, so forgive any transgressions.

Takes text with unicode emojis on standard input, spits out emojis replaced by either classic smileys (:-)) or textual variants (:joy:) on standard output.

Alternatively, import it in your script and call replace_emoji(<string>).

For example, start by adding this repo to your project (you're using git, I presume):

git submodule add https://git.anduin.net/ltning/emoji_to_smiley.git smiley

then, in your code

from smiley import smiley
for line in sys.stdin:
    print(smiley.replace_emoji(line))

Needs

pip3.12 install emoji-data-python

or whatever your platform wants.

There are probably a million better ways to do this.

(I'll be using this, at some point, in front of my Pleroma-Gopher interface).