[jcranmer]

> It's how the code point address space is defined.

Not really. Unicode is still fundamentally based off of the codepoints, which go from 0 to 2^16 + 2^20, and all of the algorithms of Unicode properties operate on these codepoints. It's just that Unicode has left open a gap of codepoints so that the upper 2^20 codepoints can be encoded in UTF-16 without risk of confusion of other UCS-2 text.

[jeberle]

You forgot `- 2^11` for the surrogate pairs. Gee, why isn't Unicode 2^21 code points? To understand the Unicode code point space you must understand UTF-16. The code space is defined by how UTF-16 works. That was my initial point.

[jcranmer]

If you're going to count the surrogate pairs as not-a-Unicode-codepoint, you should also count the other noncharacters: the last two codepoints on each of the 17 planes and the range U+FDD0-U+FDEF.

The expansion of Unicode beyond the BMP was designed to facilitate an upgrade compatibility path from UCS-2 systems, but it is extremely incorrect to somehow equate Unicode with UTF-16.

[kbolino]

FWIW there is an official term for "code points excluding surrogates", it is "Unicode scalar value".

[jeberle]

OK, I'm lost here. Why is there a 1:1 correspondence between the two?