How do I format Chinese characters so they fit the columns?

Question

I am trying to print some information in a column-oriented way. Everything works well for Latin characters, but when Chinese characters are printed, the columns stop being aligned. Let's consider an example:

var latinPresentation1 = "some text".PadRight(30) + "| " + 23;
var latinPresentation2 = "some longer text".PadRight(30) + "| " + 23;

Console.WriteLine(latinPresentation1);
Console.WriteLine(latinPresentation2);

Console.WriteLine("..............................................");

var chinesePresentation1 = "一些文字".PadRight(30) + " | " + 23;
var chinesePresentation2 = "一些較長的文字".PadRight(30) + "| " + 23;

Console.WriteLine(chinesePresentation1);
Console.WriteLine(chinesePresentation2);

Output:

some text                     | 23
some longer text              | 23
.................................................
一些文字                           | 23
一些較長的文字                       | 23

As one can see, the Chinese is not aligned to columns. Important note: this is just a presentation of the problem; it won't be used in a console app. Can anyone help me with this?

Answer 1

You can use the TextRenderer.MeasureText method from System.Windows.Forms assembly to build the output text basing on string width, instead of characters count.

Here's the util method:

public static string FillWithSpaces(this string text, int width, Font font)
{
    while (TextRenderer.MeasureText(text, font).Width < width)
    {
        text += ' ';
    }
    return text;
}

And the usage:

var font = new Font("Courier New", 10.0F);
var padding = 340;

var latinPresentation1 = "some text ".FillWithSpaces(padding, font) + "| 23";
var latinPresentation2 = "some longer text".FillWithSpaces(padding, font) + "| 23";

var chinesePresentation1 = "一些文字".FillWithSpaces(padding, font) + "| 23";
var chinesePresentation2 = "一些較長的文字".FillWithSpaces(padding, font) + "| 23";

var result = latinPresentation1 + Environment.NewLine +
             latinPresentation2 + Environment.NewLine +
             ".............................................." + Environment.NewLine +
             chinesePresentation1 + Environment.NewLine +
             chinesePresentation2; 

The solution requires padding parameter (in px) and font used.