Text Width (Unicode Width) Calculator

Demonstrates string width calculation in a terminal environment.

Not all characters are created equal. In a TUI, “Width” means cell count, not string length. Emoji (👍) take 2 cells. Chinese characters (你) take 2 cells. The tui.text_width helper tells you the visual width of a string.

Features Demonstrated

• Unicode Width: Rendering ASCII (1 cell), CJK (2 cells), and Emoji (2 cells).

• Calculation: Comparing string.length vs tui.text_width(string).

Hotkeys

• Up/Down (↑/↓): Cycle Text Sample

• q: Quit

Usage

ruby examples/widget_text_width/app.rb

Learning Outcomes

Use this example if you need to…

• Align text correctly in columns.

• Truncate strings that are too long for a widget.

• Build your own custom layout engine.

Read the source code →