-----Original Message----- From: Doug Ewell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 8:19 AM To: Philippe Verdy; Nelson H. F. Beebe Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Java char and Unicode 3.0+ (was:Canonical equivalence in rendering: mandatory or recommended?)
> planes with 31-bit codepoints, and maybe there will be an agreement > sometime in the future between ISO and Unicode to define new > codepoints out of the current standard 17 first planes
Don't even begin to count on this. U+10FFFF will most assuredly be the upper limit as long as you and I are here to talk about it.
As a scientist, I don't believe in clairvoyance. I do, however, think that "maybe ... sometime in the future ..." is a reasonable enough statement to make, and that "...will most assuredly ...as long as you and I are here" is a very dangerous predicition to make (unless I'm wrong about clairvoyance).
Don't count on anything. Even if Unicode stops at 10FFFF, there may be other, future standards, of which Unicode is but a subset. I'm sure the designers of ASCII thought it was amply large enough at the time.
It's a simple enough rule - never hard-code limitations into your design if you don't have to. You may one day live to regret it. (Or you may not ... but no-one will ever critise you for erring on the side of safety).
Jill Ramonsky
