Subject: Re: [PATCH] Unicode: update of combining code points

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 12:54:58 -0700

Hi,

Torsten Bögershausen wrote:

> Unicode 6.3 defines the following code as combining or accents,
> git_wcwidth() should return 0.
>
> Earlier unicode standards had defined these code point as "reserved":

Thanks for the update.  Could the commit message also explain how this
was noticed and what the user-visible effect is?

For example:

 "Unicode just announced that <...>.  That means we should mark the
  relevant code points as combining characters so git knows they are
  zero-width and doesn't screw up the alignment when presenting branch
  names in columns with 'git branch --column'"

or something like that.

[...]
> 358 COMBINING DOT ABOVE RIGHT
> 359 COMBINING ASTERISK BELOW

I'm not sure this list is needed --- the code + the reference to the
Unicode 6.3 standard seems like enough (but if you think otherwise,
I don't really mind).

> This commit touches only the range 300-6FF, there may be more to be updated.

The "there may be more" here sounds ominous.  Does that mean Unicode
6.3 also added some zero-width characters in other ranges that should
be dealt with in the future?  How many such ranges?  How do we know
when we're done?

Just biting off the most important characters first and putting off
the rest for later sounds fine to me --- my complaint is that the
above comment doesn't make clear what the to-do list is for finishing
the update later.

Thanks and hope that helps,
Jonathan