macos with default settings, U+2665 (♥) uses JetBrainsMono Nerd Font instead of Menlo - inconsistent width as a result

[ldemailly]

Issue Description

In every other terminal "♠♥♦♣" have the same rendering and width (single width) except with ghostty where the heart is special/uses a different font and is double width and hollow instead of what it's supposed to be (single width and filled)

Reproduction Steps

ghostty +show-face --string="♠♥♦♣ ❤"

U+2660 « ♠ » found in face “Menlo”.
U+2665 « ♥ » found in face “JetBrainsMono Nerd Font”.
U+2666 « ♦ » found in face “Menlo”.
U+2663 « ♣ » found in face “Menlo”.
U+20 «   » found in face “JetBrainsMono Nerd Font”.
U+2764 « ❤ » found in face “Menlo”.

the 'normal' heart shows up double spaced and hollow and the double one doesn't show up double nor red (but that's not the issue I have trying to get the cards type to show all the same across terminals)

Ghostty Version

Ghostty 1.1.4-main+38445dca

Version
  - version: 1.1.4-main+38445dca
  - channel: tip
Build Config
  - Zig version: 0.14.0
  - build mode : builtin.OptimizeMode.ReleaseFast
  - app runtime: apprt.Runtime.none
  - font engine: font.main.Backend.coretext
  - renderer   : renderer.Metal
  - libxev     : kqueue

OS Version Information

Macos 15.4.1 (24E263)

(Linux only) Display Server

None

(Linux only) Desktop Environment/Window Manager

No response

Ghostty Configuration

theme = Terminal Basic Dark
window-save-state = always
shell-integration = bash

Additional Relevant Configuration

No response

I acknowledge that:

• I have reviewed the FAQ and confirm that my issue is NOT among them.
• I have searched the Ghostty repository (both open and closed Discussions and Issues) and confirm this is not a duplicate of an existing issue or discussion.

[ldemailly]

For now I added in fortio/terminal#112 the rather ugly

Heart = "♥"
if os.Getenv("TERM") == "xterm-ghostty" {
		Heart = "❤"
}

but I don't even know if that's also needed on Linux or the issue is MacOS only (if anyone on Linux could please confirm? tia)

[edrozenberg]

I don't have the knowledge to figure out what's going on but I can confirm the issue on MacOS.

Looks fine on my Linux setup, where Ghostty uses Liberation Mono.

MacOS Ghostty:

MacOS Terminal.app:

(I don't know how Terminal.app properly renders the heart, bc I'm using SF Mono in Terminal.app, which does not contain that heart glyph, so presumably Terminal.app is grabbing that glyph elsewhere, some system glyph lib maybe?)

Linux Ghostty:

[danielwe]

See #9161 for related issues and discussion

[danielwe]

I don't think double width for that character is correct anyway

The East Asian Width of this codepoint is ambiguous, so it's expected that its width is context dependent: https://codepoints.net/U+2665.

Anyway, Ghostty doesn't treat this character as EA wide in the sense that it fully occupies a double cell like CJK characters and emojis, where the cursor becomes double width and you're not able to highlight or type in only the second of the two cells. It just happens that in this font, the glyph is wider than the character cell, in the same way many glyphs with diacritics are higher than a cell. You can still place your cursor in the second cell and type something (in which case Ghostty will helpfully scale it down to avoid overlap, which it didn't have to do, but it's usually what you'd prefer).

[ldemailly]

It's interesting that adding a printeable character after changes the behavior, can be sort of a workaround (which character though when wanting to print "10♥" on a card, some sort of nbsp ?

Yet doesn't change that the rendering is still off without it and even with it

Kitty on top; ghostty bottom:

[danielwe]

some sort of nbsp ?

Yes, non-breaking space U+00A0 will force single width. Also, directly preceding it with a symbol-like character has the same effect.

[danielwe]

I believe it should also not use it for that character

Now that JetBrains and Symbols Nerd Font are loaded as separate fonts, I guess one could consider only allowing the built-in Symbols Nerd Font to be used for PUA codepoints. @qwerasd205 thoughts? Nerd Fonts contains 14 non-PUA icons: