On Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 08:12:05PM +1100, George W Gerrity wrote: > >A 22bit integer is used for that purpose. > > That comment in another letter re-enforced my belief that the lisp > engine was the trouble. I ASSUMED that the lisp atom was a 32-bit > word, and that the missing ten bits were taken up with tags, etc. The > point is, however, that maybe 22 bits is OK for this round, but what > do you do in a year or two when the higher planes get more populated, > and someone wants to use emacs for some quick and dirty editing of a > scholarly work on cuneiform, say?
The higher planes implies you're talking about Unicode. But Unicode is committed to fitting within the 20.1 bit space currently defined. Furthermore, no one anticipates overflowing even the current four planes that are being used. Pretty much every known writing script has been tenatively blocked out for space in Unicode - Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform will probably get U+12800-U12C80 if and when it gets added to Unicode. They all fit within those 4 planes (actually 3, if you ignore the tag characters.) If there is a problem with 22 bits, it won't come from Unicode. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less." - "Disciple", Stuart Davis -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
