I'm aware, and don't think I'd agree that flags (or emoji more generally) were handled well at all. I generally think that such things should be handled via an escape code that invokes some other (higher level) standard, the same as colored or bold font in the terminal. It would arguably make much more sense to encode flags (and emoji-like things in general) as some sort of compressed SVG representation. At least then (among other things) I wouldn't have to wonder how things would look to message recipients or someone reading old messages in the future.