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Keep in mind that the 16-bit limitation relied on the Han unification, an incredibly controversial project where related languages from three Asian cultures all

Keep in mind that the 16-bit limitation relied on the Han unification, an incredibly controversial project where related languages from three Asian cultures all got butchered in the process. It was culturally insensitive and limited the range of Unicode, and is a major reason Unicode is actually rare in these locales: China still majorly uses GB, and Japan Shift-JIS, and Taiwan Big5. The experience was one of the big reasons Unicode 2.0 raised the limit, as they never wanted to go through that process again.

zozbot234 7y ago
16-bit is also a non-starter if you want to include historical or rare CJK characters, historical/ancient scripts, symbol sets, etc. So a 32-bit encoding does make a lot of sense.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  I don't know that I've ever heard a good reason why we need to have historical/ancient scripts, symbol sets, etc. in something like Unicode.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    Scholarly publications on the web.
    - gritzko 7y ago
      The only extinct language used in scholarly publication is Latin, AFAIK.
      - SahAssar 7y ago
        Ah, so nobody is doing any research on older non-european cultures then? No archeological or linguistic or other kinds of research? Nothing on african, asian, american cultures?
        gritzko 7y ago
        I mean, a corpus of researchers writing articles in an extinct language, reading them like that, googling in the language? Vatican is the only example I can think of.
        Tomte 7y ago
        No. They are writing about those languages and need to cite the original. Show phrases in that language and then comment on them in English.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Don't buy it. That's a huge amount of complication to add for such a niche use case that could just as easily use a custom font or straight-up images. Besides, Klingon apparently doesn't get a mere 40 slots for its characters and is probably used more in text communication than some of these ancient languages.
- ksec 7y ago
  Not an expert on languages, but I really think Unicode should leave CJK alone emoji as a separate project.

zozbot234 7y ago

16-bit is also a non-starter if you want to include historical or rare CJK characters, historical/ancient scripts, symbol sets, etc. So a 32-bit encoding does make a lot of sense.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I don't know that I've ever heard a good reason why we need to have historical/ancient scripts, symbol sets, etc. in something like Unicode.
- Tomte 7y ago
  Scholarly publications on the web.
  - gritzko 7y ago
    The only extinct language used in scholarly publication is Latin, AFAIK.
    - SahAssar 7y ago
      Ah, so nobody is doing any research on older non-european cultures then? No archeological or linguistic or other kinds of research? Nothing on african, asian, american cultures?
      - gritzko 7y ago
        I mean, a corpus of researchers writing articles in an extinct language, reading them like that, googling in the language? Vatican is the only example I can think of.
        Tomte 7y ago
        No. They are writing about those languages and need to cite the original. Show phrases in that language and then comment on them in English.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Don't buy it. That's a huge amount of complication to add for such a niche use case that could just as easily use a custom font or straight-up images. Besides, Klingon apparently doesn't get a mere 40 slots for its characters and is probably used more in text communication than some of these ancient languages.
ksec 7y ago
Not an expert on languages, but I really think Unicode should leave CJK alone emoji as a separate project.