[BRLTTY] Multi-column characters on Linux

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Aura Kelloniemi on 2021/10/01 at 22:20 +0300]

>I am having a discussion with emacs developer about an emacs bug that is
>related to multi-column characters, e.g. many emojis.
>
>My first question is to those who have intimate knowledge about the Linux
>console: My understanding is that Linux has no support of any kind for
>displaying multi-column characters in a VT. Is this true? If not, what is this
>support?
>
>The second thing is related to BRLTTY's /dev/vcsu-support.

On the screen, Linux pads a wide character with a space to the right. This maintains vertical alignment, which is what they care about.

Brltty's Linux screen driver removes that space because retaining it makes it very hard for those whose languages use wide characters, e.g. Chinese, to read. Imagine how reading your language would be much more difficult if there were a space after every single letter.

This discussion has come up already within a different context. At that time, I proposed to retain the space for any wide character that hasn't been defined in the table. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to doing that yet.

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