John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth dot com> wrote: > No, I don't agree with this part. Unicode just isn't going to expand > past 0x10FFFF unless Earth joins the Galactic Empire. So the upper > bits are indeed free for private uses.
A few years ago there was the "Whistler Constant," which basically stated that at current growth rates it would take over 900 years to fill all 15 of Unicode's publicly available planes. Since the rate of growth is actually decreasing every year -- there being no as-yet-undiscovered Chinas to contribute an extra 100,000 characters -- the projected date of exhaustion is not getting any closer. There is also decreasing support, financial and technical, for significant new character additions outside of Han. Many scripts have been on the Roadmap for five or more years, and comparatively few have been added since that time. Some may never be encoded, sadly. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
