On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 4:08 AM Thiago Macieira <thiago_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> But I think that we clearly have two distinct uses: a code unit count for
> storage purposes and a cell grid (monospace font) count for alignment
> purposes. Note how maxima and minima are inverted: usually, if you're trying
> to align you need to specify a minimum, but if you're trying to ensure
> something fits a storage, you specify a maximum.

Having stuff line up on a terminal grid in the Unicode context calls
for East Asian Width (in the mode that resolves ambiguous characters
as narrow). The concept ignores lots of scripts, but many of those
scripts have properties such that combining those scripts with the
notion of having stuff line up on a grid leads to a bad time
regardless of exact definitions.

Instead of inventing something in the abstract, a good next step would
be to figure out how (in UTF-8 mode) Apple Terminal, Gnome Terminal,
Konsole, and the new Windows Terminal determine how many terminal
display column a string takes. (I'm not volunteering.)

Storage implies code unit count. Do people actually use, _with
Unicode_, fields of storage that are so fixed-width that they need to
be padded to the full storage width _and_ do they use std::format to
do so? (I guess anything is possible, but this seems to me like a very
specialized niche use case whose premise is a bad idea.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen_at_[hidden]
https://hsivonen.fi/