In addition to what Michel and others said: If Unicode would ever have
to plan for running out of code points, I'm sure that they would do it
by switching to a larger code space in a way similar to what they did
when UTF-16 was introduced. This would be highly preferable to a
switch-in/switch-out mechanism, in particular one limited to emoji.
Most probably, the definition of UTF-8 would be changed to allow more
than 3 bytes, and the definition of UTF-32 would be changed to allow the
actual use of the newly allowed code points. The definition of UTF-16,
if still needed, would be a bit more tricky.
All these changes of definitions could be done a couple decades before
actually using code points in the new ranges.
Regards, Martin.
On 2026-03-23 11:36, Michel Suignard via Unicode wrote:
Having the pen on two proposals which are bringing (or have brought) over
15,000 characters in the standard, I can tell you this will not repeat very
fast. The next monster in the horizon is Mayan and that one will take a while.
Emoji only add a few characters per year. Therefore, it is not the issue. The
major contributors to expansion these days are either historical writing
systems (finite by definition) or recently invented ones, which take some
persuasion to be incorporated for good reasons. Modern writing systems encoding
is done. There are still some underserved communities, but it is not that much
in terms of needed encoding space.
In other words, not an issue by any mean. The limit of 15 planes (the 2 PUA
planes don't count) is not an issue unless you are trying to make Unicode a
glyph repository (another can of worms).
Michel
-----Original Message-----
From: Unicode <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mark E. Shoulson
via Unicode
Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2026 7:09 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Are there [start] emoji [end] style codes?
I remember feeling a twinge of this worry (long before emoji) back when Unicode
officially limited itself to 17 planes instead of the 65535 planes of
full-blown (at the time) ISO-10646. (That's a thing that happened, right? Or
am I inventing history?) Gee, sooner or later things will run out... But be
realistic. It *is* true that with characters always being added and never
removed, eventually the current stock could eventually run out; that's just
math. But it isn't just the current trends place that happening way in the
future; we also don't expect current trends to continue. Unicode was never
meant to be infinite and encompass every kind of writing that will ever be
invented. We're already filling in the corners with obscure scripts now, and
there are only so many more writing systems worth encoding. Same with emoji
(well, maybe). We would hope that the growth of the emoji set would slow down
as most of the important symbols get encoded. (It is a little !
ha!
rd to say for certain because emoji aren't like other things, and we're still
sort of figuring out how to treat them.)
So, yes, I understand the knee-jerk feeling that "there's only a limited
supply!" and also the feeling that everyone else is just pretending the problem is
SOOO far in the future when they should know better... but it really kind of *is* that
far off.
~mark
On 3/22/26 6:06 PM, Doug Ewell via Unicode wrote:
Lee Shallis wrote:
Sooner or later the current pool will run out.
That’s like saying “Sooner or later, the earth will crash into the sun.” It’s
not like Y2K, where developers created problems that surfaced within decades;
this is more like centuries or millennium.
You may want to examine this page if you are interested in the actual rate at
which the Unicode codespace is being consumed:
https://www.unicode.org/versions/stats/
--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org
