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There's always more glyphs to encode, but I think it will be a long time before we reach hundreds of millions of glyphs, even if we assigned codepoints to every

There's always more glyphs to encode, but I think it will be a long time before we reach hundreds of millions of glyphs, even if we assigned codepoints to every fictional script and every glyph used in dead scripts, and every variation used in medieval and ancient times, and every future new emoticon or glyph for new scripts or fashionable things. Remember, you need a fairly large number of users for each glyph, otherwise there's no point. We're not going to have per-person glyphs, as no one could understand enough of them for them to be useful. There aren't going to be too many new scripts with users in just the hundreds of thousands, or low single-digits millions. However, if that's wrong, if population gets large enough and regional scripts become a thing... then yeah, we'd run out, but let's hope not -- Unicode is complex enough as it is.

WorldMaker 8y ago
> Remember, you need a fairly large number of users for each glyph, otherwise there's no point. You are forgetting scripts like Linear A and Linear B which Unicode encodes despite only being of use to a few dozen academics or so at a time, and a few dozen (if that) or so (very) historic documents and maybe hundreds of academic papers over time. Popularity/usage isn't a determiner for Unicode encoding of a script. There are plenty of good reasons to encode low usage scripts and glyphs, if they help people communicate when they are used. But yes, I agree that it is probably a long while until the Astral Plane runs out, even encoding every small academically interesting thing along the way. I just don't feel we can discount the possibility that the Astral Plane won't be the last plane simply because we can't imagine today what the "Imaginary Plane" would even contain.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  I'm not forgetting those or any other historical scripts. I mentioned those. My comment about the number of users of glyphs was in the context of future new glyphs. The supply of old glyphs is pretty limited, so it's easy to accept them all even if the number of users is minute :)

WorldMaker 8y ago

> Remember, you need a fairly large number of users for each glyph, otherwise there's no point. You are forgetting scripts like Linear A and Linear B which Unicode encodes despite only being of use to a few dozen academics or so at a time, and a few dozen (if that) or so (very) historic documents and maybe hundreds of academic papers over time. Popularity/usage isn't a determiner for Unicode encoding of a script. There are plenty of good reasons to encode low usage scripts and glyphs, if they help people communicate when they are used. But yes, I agree that it is probably a long while until the Astral Plane runs out, even encoding every small academically interesting thing along the way. I just don't feel we can discount the possibility that the Astral Plane won't be the last plane simply because we can't imagine today what the "Imaginary Plane" would even contain.

cryptonector 8y ago
I'm not forgetting those or any other historical scripts. I mentioned those. My comment about the number of users of glyphs was in the context of future new glyphs. The supply of old glyphs is pretty limited, so it's easy to accept them all even if the number of users is minute :)