On 08/19/2011 05:07 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
"Mark E. Shoulson"<mark at kli dot org> wrote:
And indeed, it went the other way too, back when ISO-10646 had not 17,
but 65536 *planes* and someone provided some reasonable evidence (or
just plain reasoned arguments) that 4.3 *billion* characters was
probably overkill.
Technically, I think 10646 was always limited to 32,768 planes so that
one could always address a code point with a 32-bit signed integer (a
nod to the Java fans).
Whew! So I guess it wasn't THAT many characters anyway... :)
(Like Hofstadter's story about the professor who says that she
calculates that the sun will burn out in 5 billion years. A nervous
voice in the back of the room asks "h-how soon again?" "5 billion
years." "Whew!" says the voice, sounding relieved. "For a minute I
thought you said only 5 *million*")
~mark
