Re: XML and ISO 10646 planes beyond the BMP

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Aug 18 1997 - 15:19:52 EDT


>
> On Sun, 17 Aug 1997, Keld J|rn Simonsen wrote:
>
> > Misha Wolf writes:
> >
> > > - While the ISO 10646 coding space is theoretically 31 (not 32) bits
> > > wide, it is my understanding that ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 has decided
> > > not to encode characters beyond the 17 planes covered by Unicode.
> >
> > As far as I know, this is not true. There has even been some proposals
> > in SC2/WG2 to encode data outside the 17 planes reachable by UTF-16.
>
> Keld - To help us decide what to use in the SGML declaration for HTML,
> can you please expand on:
>
> - The nature of the data in these proposals.
> - The actual position of the proposed encodings (99999999 reaches
> 26 out of 31 bits).
> - The seriousness of the proponents.
> - The chances of such proposals to get accepted any time soon.
>
> Regards, Martin.
>

And I would add to Martin's questions:

- If the proposals are for encoded *characters* to be encoded outside
  the 17 planes reachable by UTF-16, what would justify the implied
  break between Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 to put them there instead
  of on the first 15 planes (0..14; 15 and 16 are private use)?

- If the proposals are for encoding something other than *characters*,
  as implied by the terminology "encode data" above, then why are
  such proposals associated with SC2/WG2 and 10646 instead of some
  completely different standard?

--Ken



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