What is a pictogram?

Pictograms are much like emojis, but standardized by the Wap Forum first and by the OMA later.

The full specification is available from the OMA site, as part of the Enabler Programme, look for Pictogram, of course.

In short, if you want to use a pictogram you should place an object element in your page and use a special protocol. Here is an example:

<object data=“pict:///core/arrow/right” />

As you can see there’s the protocol, pict and a path. core is the pictogram set. OMA defined a number of sets. arrow/right is the icon name and will display an arrow turned right, of course.

The object element supports alternatives. Here is an example of how you can try to use a pictogram, define an alternative and also have a fall back to an image:

<object data=“pict:///time/season/winter”> 
 <object data=”pict:///weather/snow”> 
 <img src=“http://www.pict.com/xx/snowman.wbmp”  
 alt=“snowman”/> 
 </object> 
</object>

Examples taken from the official OMA documentation

The object element is often problematic and not all browsers might interpret it properly. Also, different devices will support different pictogram sets.
Usage is not exactly suggested, but rather discouraged.

If you want to know more about emojis, you should read What is an emoji?

Pictograms were already present in WML 1 and had been standarized by the WAP Forum.

The object element was not present in the WML specification so the img element was used. localsrc is an additional attribute for the img tag that lets the developer specify an icon that is stored in ROM. The idea was actually to save bandwidth by being able to provide a small icon as an alternative to an image that could not be retrieved or had an error. This meant that in the img element you might have both the src AND localsrc, if the file specified in the src attribute was not found, the icon defined in localsrc would be loaded.
In many cases, developers do not specify an src attribute and the localsrc file is automatically loaded from the internal memory.

Example:

<img localsrc=“pict:///core/arrow/right” src=“http://www.pict.com/xx/rightArrow.wbmp”   alt=“-&gt;”/>

Openwave has had it’s own implementation for many years. Openwave browsers have a set of pictograms of their own and have been available since version 4 or even before.

You might also want to read What are Openwave.com WML Extensions and how do they work?