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UTF-8000: Unlimited UTF-8

134 points · 122 comments · vismit2000

  1. Sharlin · · focus · HN ↗
    UTF-8 originally supported up to six-byte encodings (see eg. RFC 2279), but it was restricted to four bytes in 2003 in order to match UTF-16 constraints :(
    1. delamon · · focus · HN ↗
      We still have about 85% of codepoint space unused. Hopefully, by the time it becomes a problem, UTF-16 will be long dead
      1. nasso_dev · · focus · HN ↗
        i hope so too, but UTF-16 being used by languages such as java and javascript makes me fear it might be here to stay.... i hope im wrong
        1. 7bit · · focus · HN ↗
          Utf-16 is famously used by Windows for everything important as well.
          1. adornKey · · focus · HN ↗
            And UTF-8 isn't even fully compatible with windows UTF-16 - UTF8 can't encode a lot of truncated windows UTF-16 filenames.. You need WTF-8 for that.

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artoria2e5.github.io&#x2F;XB18030&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artoria2e5.github.io&#x2F;XB18030&#x2F;

            It seems when designing Unicode most energy went into emoji. And there was nothing left for fancy things like fixed-length string buffers. The only explaination why UTF8 Buffers aren&#x27;t compatible with UTF16 Buffers... is a really strong emoji...

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