Creating a good custom emoticon chat experience on iOS

Question

I'm trying to come up with possible implementations for what is basically an expanding UITextView with the capability of typing inline images.

There are literally dozens of open source projects I've seen that handle creation of labels with custom emoticons, UIWebViews that draw your images inline with text and so on, but none that don't run over the native UITextView behavior:

• Autocorrect
• Spelling
• Magnifying glass
• Selection tooltip and capability
• Double space for period

The only app I've seen on the app store that gives a good, robust experience with typing custom emoticons is Viber.

So the question is - how did they do this? Any ideas, notes or references would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The only thing that comes to mind is this, but I've never touched it. You might make something useful if you can make certain code points render the way you want, like the built-in emoji.