Support Discord-style colon emoji shortcuts in meeting chat

[AssociationForComputingMachinery-VIT]

Feature request

Add support for Discord-style emoji shortcuts in chat messages, such as :smile:, :cry:, or :thumbsup:.

Motivation

Participants want a quick text-based way to insert or render emoticons/emoji in chat, similar to Discord.

Proposed behavior

• Recognize supported :emoji_name: patterns while composing or rendering a chat message.
• Render recognized shortcuts as their corresponding emoji.
• Leave unrecognized shortcuts unchanged as plain text.
• Preserve existing Unicode emoji behavior.

Acceptance criteria

• A message containing a supported shortcut (for example, :cry:) displays the matching emoji.
• Multiple shortcuts in one message are supported.
• Unknown or malformed colon-delimited text is not incorrectly converted.
• The feature works consistently for sent and received chat messages.

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Requested by Ishaan during a Conclave meeting.