So, is 879,309 enough? No way. We're doomed, and much sooner than anyone
imagines. John Jenkins says:
> the IRG is *already* looking to adding some 60,000 ideographs
> for Extension C.
We have an obvious law of increasing inutility operating here... The more
obscure and useless the Han character, the greater the pressure to add all
of its microscopic glyphic variations as character codes. If we
extrapolate from the current rate, we can see we're way ahead of the
hypothetical Whistler Curve.
We started with 20,000 Han characters, and added a few dribs. Extension B
just brought in 40,000 more, and according to the Jenkins hypothesis,
we'll have 60,000 in Extension C. Let's say that's 2 years down the road.
If we have an extension that increases in size by even a mere 20,000
characters every 2 years, we're looking at overflowing by the year 2010.
In that year, we shall be unable to encode "Extension I" which would bring
the total number of Han characters to over 900,000.
Rick
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