Comment by cruffle_duffle

If you tried to come up with a “lightweight” Unicode alternative it would almost certainly evolve right back into the clusterfuck that Unicode is. In fact the odds would mean it would probably be even worse.

Unicode is complex because capturing all the worlds writing systems into a single system is categorically complex. Because human meatspace language is complex.

And even then if you decided to “rewrite the worlds language systems themselves” to conform to a simpler system it too would eventually evolve right back into the clusterfuck that is the worlds languages.

It’s inescapable. You cannot possibly corral however many billion people live on this planet into something less complex. Humans are too complex and the ideas and emotions they need to express are too complex.

The fact that Unicode does as good of a job as it does and has stuck around for so long is a pretty big testament to how well designed and versatile it is! What came before it was at least an order of magnitude worse and whatever replaces it will have to be several orders of magnitude better.

Whatever drives a Unicode replacement would have to demonstrate a huge upset to how we do things… like having to communicate with intelligent life on other planets or something and even then they probably have just as big of a cluster fuck as Unicode to represent whatever their writing system is. And even then Unicode might be able to support it!