> So you mean grapheme clusters or code points?

I mean character count. The unicode standard defines that as separate from and meaningfully different than grapheme clusters or codepoints.

The confusion you're relying on isn't real.

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> Do you want to count zero-width characters?

Are they characters? Yes? Then I want to count them.

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> More specifically what are you trying to do?

(narrows eyes)

I want to count characters. You're trying to make that sound confusing, but it really isn't.

I don't care if you think it's a "zero width" character. Zero width space is often not actually zero width in programmers' fonts, and almost every font has at least a dozen of these wrong.

I don't care about whatever other special moves you think you have, either.

This is actually very simple.

The unicode standard has something called a "character count." It is more work than the grapheme cluster count. The grapheme cluster count doesn't honor removals, replacements, substitutions, and it does something different in case folding.

The people trying super hard to show how technically apt they are at the difficulties in Unicode are just repeating things they've heard other people say.

The actual unicode standard makes this straightforward, and has these two terms separated already.

If you genuinely want to undersatnd this, read Unicode 14 chapter 2, "general structure." It's about 50 pages. You can probably get away with just reading 2.2.3.

It is three pages long.

It's called "characters, not glyphs," because 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 "𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫" 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬.

The word "character" is well defined in Unicode. If you think it means anything other than point 2, 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒔𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕, 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒑𝒍𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂 𝒅𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐𝒑𝒊𝒄𝒔.

All you need is on pages 15 and 16. Go ahead.

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I want every choice to be made in accord with the Unicode standard. Every technicality you guys are trying to bring up was handled 20 years ago.

These words are actually well defined in the context of Unicode, and they're non-confusing in any other context. If you struggle with this, it is by choice.

Size means byte count. Length means character count. No, it doesn't matter if you incorrectly pull technical terminology like "grapheme clusters" and "code points," because I don't mean either of those. I mean 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭.

If you have the sequence `capital a`, `zero width joiner`, `joining umlaut`, `special character`, `emoji face`, `skin color modifier`, you have:

1. Six codepoints
2. Three grapheme clusters
3. Four characters

Please wait until you can explain why before continuing to attempt to teach technicalities, friend. It doesn't work the way you claim.

This might help.

https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14.0.0/UnicodeStanda...

Here, let's save you some time on some other technicalities that aren't.

1. If you write a unicode modifying character after something that cannot be modified - like adding an umlaut to a zero width joiner - then the umlaut will be considered a full character, but also discarded. Should it be counted? According to the Unicode standard, yes.
2. If you write a zero width anything, and it's a character, should it be counted? Yes.
3. If you write something that is a grapheme cluster, but your font or renderer doesn't support it, so it renders as two characters (by example, they added couple emoji in Unicode 10 and gay couples in Unicode 11, so phones that were released inbetween would render a two-man couple as two individual men.) Should that be counted as a single character as it's written, or a double character as it's rendered? Single.
4. If you're in a font that includes language variants - by example, Swiss German fancy fonts sometimes separate the S Tset into two distinct S characters that are flowed separately - should that be calculated as one character or two? Two, it turns out.
5. If a character pair is kerned into a single symbol, like an English cursive capital F to lower case E, should that be counted as one character or two? Two.

There's a whole chapter of these. If you really enjoy going through them, stop quizzing me and just read it.

These questions have been answered for literal decades. Just go read the standard already.