> We are expecting a release from Bell Labs of Plan 9 with 21-bit runes > replacing the current 16-bit version. This is big and difficult and > almost certainly extremely painful, so I doubt it will be completed > quickly (feel free to surprise me, guys!). I noticed some changes > being applied today, I think Geoff and Co. are approaching the problem > circumspectly and, this is my guess, by making adjustments that can be > kept self-contained. I do wish them speedy success.
i transitioned to 20 bit runes a few years ago, and the process was really pain-free. Runemax is handy to have instead of just hard-coding 0xffff, and character arrays on the stack are a bit suspicious, since they often mean UTFmax or UTFmax+1. but most programs are good-to-go for large runes. notible exceptions that i can think of off the top of my head are in no order: - wc - ed, sed, sort - rc - grep (for bursting rune ranges) these are fixed in 9atom, and not a problem unless you actually use them. there are a few problems in the libraries, also fixed. mostly in the font code. there are also tools in 9atom to create new tables for libc in /sys/src/cmd/rune, including a unicode 6.1 /lib/unicode. because who doesn't want to grin ; grep grin /lib/unicode 01f600 grinning face 01f601 grinning face with smiling eyes 01f638 grinning cat face with smiling eyes ; ; unicode 01f600 01f601 01f638 😀 😁 😸 - erik
