[NTG-context] Unicode 13 – save the \dodo!

[Arthur Reutenauer]

On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 11:22:26AM +0100, Hans Hagen wrote:
> we are waiting for you to predict the future, when do you think nofemoji
> will pass nofnonemoji (we could draw a curve of how much got added each
> version of unicode) .. visualizing your argument could help

  It’s never going to happen.  Since after the initial addition of over
1000 emojis from the Japanese telcos in 2010 (which few people outside
Japan took notice of at the time), the rate of new emojis has been more
or less constant at 50-100 a year (out of a total of 500-10,000 new
characters / year).  This is never going to come anywhere near close the
100K+ other Unicode characters that already exist.  It wouldn’t be
manageable anyway (not that I think it is now: it can only get worse).

  If the pressure to add new emojis is maintained, one of the big
players is going to get tired of the slow process and solve the issue in
a technical way (by embedding emojis as images for example, that
wouldn’t be revolutionary) or -- my personal favourite, which over a
decade ago I thought was obvious, but clearly isn’t -- they’re going to
break away from the dependency on the Unicode Consortium and start
maintaining their own repository of images with code points in the
private use area.  They’re plenty of space for that there.

	Best,

		Arthur