UTF-8 Unicode operators vs digraphs

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, August 14, 2026 12:41:45 AM Mountain Daylight Time Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Some good observations!
>
> If there is a specific code point for é, then the combining character
> alternative should be illegal.

It should have been illegal to have multiple ways to represent the same
grapheme, but some of the requirements that the Unicode guys had to deal
with made that impossible (e.g. being able to convert from older encodings
to Unicode and back again losslessly). The stuff that came before Unicode
infected Unicode pretty badly. Unfortunately, if it hadn't, then Unicode
likely would never have been accepted in the first place. So, I'm not sure
that there was ever much chance of Unicode actually being clean, sadly.

Reading up on the Unicode standard and why it is the way that it is has been
one of the most frustrating experiences of my career.

- Jonathan M Davis