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by cstrahan
1099 days ago
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The original quote for reference: > So one Unicode character can be up to 5 bytes long and take up the same canvas space as 3 characters. FWIW, I didn't read that as suggesting an upper bound of 5 bytes, but rather as an example using arbitrary numbers: N bytes of code units could, depending on the font providing the glyph(s) for the respective grapheme(s), could be rendered at M times the size of, say, the letter A, where N != M -- despite the font otherwise being monospaced. Which is just another way of saying that you must consult the font for the character widths involved. I think you're reading that quote as an assertion that: For any grapheme G, G can be encoded in at most 5 bytes.
While what I think was being said was: There exists a grapheme G, where G is encoded in 5 bytes, and the respective glyph happens to be displayed at 3 times a single character (e.g. the letter A), despite the font otherwise being monospaced. Therefore you *must* consult the font for each glyph to correctly determine character widths.
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> You also need to read ahead as there are combination characters, for example a smiley combined with the color brow becomes a brown smiley.
Emphasis mine. Clearly combination characters are being treated separately.
Frankly I think it's crazy to read "up to 5 bytes" and not think that it suggest an upper bound. I think you're reaching for a highly questionably interpretation of a totally unambiguous clause. If the author meant to express what you're saying, they would certainly have written: "Some Unicode characters are 5 bytes long and take up the same canvas space as 3 characters". Which would still look incorrect if they followed it with the sentence "You also need to read ahead as there are combination characters...".
It is far more likely that the author is simply mistaken and should have said 4 bytes, and perhaps used the word "codepoint" instead of "character" in the original sentence. That's a perfectly understandable technical error, while the reinterpretation you're putting together would imply an error of colloquial language.