We have beer fridays and my coworkers keep sending me (b) and expect me to know that that is a beer icon. They use Lync and I use this lovely Sipe addon on Pidgin.
If there's time, please add text replace of lync emoji text with gpl icons?
https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Keyboard-shortcuts-for-emoticons-c1f07009-bbc4-4fba-87d7-564c01647b43
SIPE is a protocol plugin, not a UI plugin. If you want to have emoticons in your conversation windows, please enable them in Pidgin and/or install an emoticon theme of your choice.
Closing as invalid.