Is there a blank Unicode character matching emoji width?

user_1161045 0
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Does Unicode define a blank character (like "Em Space" or "En Space") with the same width as any/some emoji (something like "Emoji Space")? If yes, which one is it?

I'd like to be able to format a fixed-width font plain-text table containing emojis (CI report e-mail). They seem to be impossible to align either with regular or any other spaces I tried (compare "x86_64", "arm" and "mips" lines):

                                                                                               
    Status                                                                                     
        ❌ 13 / 733 builds FAILED                                                              
    Architectures                                                                              
        x86_64       ✅ 82  ❓ 4                                                               
        aarch64      ✅ 6                                                                      
        ppc64le      ✅ 5                                                                      
        s390x        ✅ 5                                                                      
        mips    ❌ 9 ✅ 77                                                                     
        arm64        ✅ 73                                                                     
        arm     ❌ 4 ✅ 282 ❓ 4                                                               
        i386         ✅ 30                                                                     
        sparc        ✅ 9                                                                      
        riscv        ✅ 33                                                                     
        arc          ✅ 10                                                                     
        s390         ✅ 21                                                                     
        powerpc      ✅ 52                                                                     
        sh           ✅ 18                                                                     
        parisc       ✅ 9

Applying VS16 to space/letters, or VS15 to emojis, largely didn't work (in Firefox, Chrome and Thunderbird):

|   |
|❌︎✅︎❓︎|
| ️ ️ ️|
|❌✅❓|
emoji unicode
2 Answers

The answer at this moment seems to be "no". A workaround could be using another emoji, closest in meaning to "nothing", depending on your context. E.g. this is what I'm going with in our CI emails:

BUILDS

    Status
                 ❌ 4  ✅ 712
    Architectures
         x86_64  ➖    ✅  82
        aarch64  ➖    ✅   6
        ppc64le  ➖    ✅   5
          s390x  ➖    ✅   5
           mips  ➖    ✅  77
          arm64  ➖    ✅  73
            arm  ❌ 4  ✅ 282
           i386  ➖    ✅  30
          sparc  ➖    ✅   9
          riscv  ➖    ✅  33
            arc  ➖    ✅  10
           s390  ➖    ✅  21
        powerpc  ➖    ✅  52
             sh  ➖    ✅  18
         parisc  ➖    ✅   9
user_11610450

This is basically a font issue. You'd need a monospace font with a glyph for U+2705 WHITE HEAVY CHECK MARK and the other characters, and make sure to disable Emojis with a variation selector. Web browsers typically replace missing characters with a fallback font, but then you lose control over character spacing. Your best bet is to use characters which are more likely to be supported. Unfortunately, even U+2713 CHECK MARK seems to be supported only in a few monospace fonts.

user_19560100
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