vim seems to have problems rendering this utf8 sequence : හොඳ විනෝදයක්

[Frank Schwidom]

Hi I am on VIM - Vi IMproved 8.2 (2019 Dec 12 kompiliert am Mar 30 2025 03:33:09) (from debian 11)

It seems to be that vim has problems to render the string

හොඳ විනෝදයක් and its surroundings correctly.

How can I fix that?

[Paul]

Is it only Vim, or is it anything in your terminal (ie. your font)? Does gvim show it OK?

[Frank Schwidom]

It is on all terminals with vim and nvim but gvim cannot display the characters.

On 2025-04-29 17:20:01, 'Paul' via vim_use wrote:
> Is it only Vim, or is it anything in your terminal (ie. your font)? Does gvim show it OK?
>

> --
> --
> You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist.
> Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to.
> For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
>
> --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "vim_use" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to vim_use+u...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vim_use/aBD8Mcfi69hUOsTR%40kitt.
>

[brickviking]

On my computer at least, the characters each appear to be double-wide, and as a result of how gvim works, I get the left-hand side of the characters presented, which makes all the characters look all squashed up and overlapping. That's with the Terminus font on an earlier Fedora Linux.

Regards, brickviking

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vim_use/aBEKl7H80UmI76Hk%40debian64.

[Eric Marceau]

I have to confirm my similar experience, that some characters seem to be using a width which is a multiple greater (and sometimes smaller) than 1 (unity), and that for those characters (specified via Unicode reference), there is overlap.

Without knowing the guts of GVim, or MATE terminal (my environment), it seems that the System-default (or Application-default) font for each of those is applied universally, and NOT on an individual character basis.  I assume that that is because of programmer assumptions that people would NOT use mixed-width characters, and so impose a single character width on the entire content display.  Obviously, that is an incorrect assumption, because you never know what width the Creators of various fonts might use, and the rendering engine should, in my estimation, be smart enough to recognize character-by-character width (a.k.a. old poured-lead typography plates) and apply those correctly where those are used.

And then again, being a text editor which could conceivably by definition not concern itself with variable width characters, if GVim had a "mode" selector that would permit the setting of display rendering to one of the two modes

- universal fixed-width, or

- typesetting variable-width,

then Gvim could offer the best of both worlds. 🙂

Just my own two cents worth!

Eric

69, retired Mechanical Engineer

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vim_use/CAHWye84xfOgHfW52t91Do_bm9eLOKNMby1bB3FCgYH%2BpM2gh8g%40mail.gmail.com.

[meine]

Of course you can use any font in your (Vim) terminal or program, it's
just a matter of taste. Fixed width fonts cause least trouble in putting
everything on screen.

When you use Vim only for text writing and editing, and do pre print in
a separate route eg. with pandoc, you can control the font that way.
Printed text are better using proportional fonts. But they are awful for
just writing and editing.

//meine

On Thu, May 01, 2025 at 03:44:54PM -0400, Eric Marceau wrote:
> I have to *confirm* my similar experience, that some characters seem to be

> using a width which is a multiple greater (and sometimes smaller) than 1
> (unity), and that for those characters (specified via Unicode reference),
> there is overlap.
>

> Without knowing the guts of *GVim*, or *MATE terminal* (my environment), it

> seems that the System-default (or Application-default) font for each of

> those is applied universally, and *NOT on an individual character basis*.  I

> assume that that is because of programmer assumptions that people would NOT

> use *mixed-width characters*, and so impose a single character width on the

> > <mailto:vim_use%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.