Other folks with deeper knowledge will weigh in, but I’m pretty sure that this doesn’t make sense. For starters, you’re confusing Unicode with encoding. And one of the beauties of UTF-8 is that if you “come in” in the middle of a multibyte character, you can tell, and can find the start of the previous/next character. Shift in/shift out is old tech that does not offer this capability, and is essentially dead, I believe.
Now, I can imagine modifier characters, like combining accents, that would change skin tones etc.—but I’d rather not: combiners have caused enough trouble, and I’d hate to see new ones added. ...phsiii (standing back and waiting to be corrected by those who know better!) From: Unicode <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Lee Shallis via Unicode Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2026 3:35 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Are there [start] emoji [end] style codes? If not I suggest making them so you're no longer constrained to the tiny range of potential codes that unicode offers. The reason for the [start] code should be obvious, indicate the next code is to be interpreted as a wide emoji code. The reason for the [end] one is just for text parser that read backwards to understand the code they're about to encounter is not normal unicode but a wide emoji code. This would give emoji a minimum of 18 extra bits to play with. Also any new emoji involving multiple skin tones, genders, etc should just be split into separate emoji. Take the recent people one, instead of people it shoulda just been person and peops could just put down however many people of whatever skin tone and gender they wanted. Instead you now have the needlessly long list of dedicated emoji for them. Final side note, I'm just a user with adhd who struggled with finding the right information on the site so go easy on me if this is wrong place to bring this up or if there was already such codes. -- Aethiests expect you to gamble your afterlife on nothingness, religions in general expect you to follow 1001 (exaggeration for some, understatement for others) rules and still gamble your afterlife on somehow not breaking any of those rules (which is nigh on impossible). Christianity is the only one that doesn't expect you to gamble, it just expects you to desire to follow God's ways and entrust your soul to his son's, the lord Jesus Christ's, sacrifice on the cross. Just 2 simple and priceless things to guarantee yourself a place in heaven, are you really willing to gamble your afterlife on anything else when the cost of losing that gamble is eternal suffering? For whether you believe in a God or not eternity is a fact and that same fact guarantees life after the death of your flesh. Think carefully about whether you would rather gamble for eternity in heaven with the only price of being wrong being a little embarrassment or for reincarnation where the price of being wrong is an eternity of being burned from flesh to bone and soul over and over and over again.
