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UTF-8000: Unlimited UTF-8

134 points · 122 comments · vismit2000

  1. sph · · focus · HN ↗
    > UTF-8000 is in no way endorsed by or representative of the Unicode Consortium.

    Not until they decide to expand the emoji range, allocate space for all past and future fictional languages, as well as birdsong and dog barks.

    Someone at the consortium is rubbing their hands with glee with all the newfound space.

    But honestly, cool hack! If you invent a method to encode large numbers into bytes, why limit yourself to 24-bit numbers?

    1. sharktheone · · focus · HN ↗
      I think that wouldn't change much. They would just make use of more grapheme clusters.

      For emojies they already make heavy use of the Zero-Width-Joiner. So a woman firefighter is the woman emoji + ZWJ + fire engine. Sure the UTF-8000 approach is much better encoding size wise.

      1. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
        I wonder how they're going to encode a female fire engine in the future.
        1. Dylan16807 · · focus · HN ↗
          No worries, that would use female sign, not woman.
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