[Python-Dev] UTF-16 code point comparison

[Bill Tutt]

> From: 	Tim Peters [mailto:tim_one@email.msn.com] 

> When the Unicode push started, it was agreed that we would ignore
surrogates
> "for now".  I sounded a caution then that I will repeat:  the Unicode
folks
> made a bad engineering decision, based on the (Eurocentric) assumption
that
> 64K was a large enough space to meet their stated goals.  Don't know how
> long it will take this half of the world to realize it, but UCS-4 is
> inevitable.

On new systems perhaps, but important existing systems (Win32, and probably
Java) are stuck with that bad decision and have to use UTF-16 for backward
compatability purposes. Surrogates aren't as far out as you might think.
(The next rev of the Unicode spec) That's certainly sooner than Win32 going
away.  :)

Bill