⬝ (BLACK VERY SMALL SQUARE) renders as non-monospace

[Kallemakela]

Minimal repro:

printf '%s\n' '--------' '⬝⬝⬝⬝⬝⬝⬝⬝'

Symbol

https://www.unicodepedia.com/unicode/miscellaneous-symbols-and-arrows/2b1d/black-very-small-square/
⬝
Name: BLACK VERY SMALL SQUARE
Code point: U+2B1D
UTF-8 bytes: E2 AC 9D

Why

Can cause some visual problems like here:

Screen.Recording.2026-06-20.at.11.30.57.mov

[emil-e]

Can you tell me:

• What primary monospace font you're using
• What font Emacs picks as a fallback for those characters. You can to describe-char with point placed on that character in in copy mode to find out.

[Kallemakela]

Primary monospace font:
JetBrainsMono Nerd Font

Fallback for ⬝:
STIX Two Math

describe char output:

             position: 57 of 229 (24%), column: 10
            character: ⬝ (displayed as ⬝) (codepoint 11037, #o25435, #x2b1d)
              charset: unicode-bmp (Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (U+0000..U+FFFF))
code point in charset: 0x2B1D
               script: symbol
               syntax: _ 	which means: symbol
             category: .:Base
             to input: type "C-x 8 RET 2b1d" or "C-x 8 RET BLACK VERY SMALL SQUARE"
          buffer code: #xE2 #xAC #x9D
            file code: #xE2 #xAC #x9D (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
              display: by this font (glyph code):
    mac-ct:-*-STIX Two Math-regular-normal-normal-*-14-*-*-*-p-0-iso10646-1 (#xC75)
Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: BLACK VERY SMALL SQUARE
  general-category: So (Symbol, Other)
  decomposition: (11037) ('⬝')

[emil-e]

Thank you, will try to reproduce!

[Kallemakela]

This was a font issue. JetBrainsMono Nerd Font just does not have this symbol. Fix if someone has same issue is to replace the missing symbol with an existing one:

(aset standard-display-table #x2b1d (vconcat "▪"))

[emil-e]

@Kallemakela It's still a bug in Ghostel. It's not really expected that that programming fonts have all the various Unicode glyphs that modern agent TUIs abuse. Emacs will pick a fallback font (STIX Two Math in your case) and Ghostel will subsequently adjust the size of that glyph so it renders monospaced. This is not happening in this case, which is what I will investigate.

[emil-e]

I'm unable to reproduce this. What Emacs version are you using?

[adisbladis]

Are you zoomed in? I had a similar issue I think may be related: #453.

[Kallemakela]

Are you zoomed in?

Yes I was, but I reinstalled everything 2 days ago and now I can't reproduce this issue. Should be closed I think. Sorry for the non-issue.