Re: Are there [start] emoji [end] style codes?

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 w
 riting 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
>>
>