English flag (from Re: How to Add Beams to Notes)

[William_J_G Overington via Unicode]

Richard Wordingham wrote:

.... U+1F3F4 U+E0067 U+E0062 U+E0065 U+E006E U+E0067 U+E007F (English flag) ....

I looked at that and I realized that although I had effectively seen that encoding in http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-11.html though expressed differently, it was only when I saw it expressed as above that I realized that there is something gone wrong with encoding policy.

There are at present ten totally unused planes in the Unicode code point map and yet that seven character sequence is needed for encoding an English flag.

Surely a single code point could be found. Single code points are being found for various emoji items on a continuing basis. Why pull up the ladder on encoding some flags each with a single code point?

Yes, a single code point for an English flag please. And one for a Welsh flag too please. And one for a Scottish flag too please. And some others please, if that is what end users want.

William Overington

Wednesday 3 May 2017