You've reported this bug against Ubuntu 16.04, whereas Unicode 9.0 was
released in June 2016. The expected behavior in that distro is hence
Unicode 8.0's.

gnome-terminal takes the character width from glib (package:
libglib2.0-0), which has surprisingly upgraded to Unicode 9.0 in a micro
version, namely 2.50.1. Again surprisingly, Yakkety has released this
version as an update (2.50.2), not in the original yakkety package
(2.50.0), which again arguably shouldn't have happened.

Most terminal emulators and apps take the character width from glibc
(package: libc6), which has not updated to Unicode 9.0 yet (as of the
just released version 2.25). At least Fedora, however, has already
patched it forward: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Unicode_9.0.
Maybe Ubuntu too, or is planning to, I don't know.

Vim, as far as I know, has its own separate built-in database.

gnome-terminal being different from most of the apps is already causing
quite a bit of a headache, see e.g.:

- https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=772812 (and follow the
links from there as well to see some of the problems it causes),

- https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=772890 (a recommendation
for gnome-terminal to use glibc's database instead - no work has been
done yet).

vim using its own database adds yet another twist to the story. I don't
know what version it ships.

The bug you reported is indeed a valid and (presumably especially in
yakkety (with updates) and zesty) a quite serious one. Strictly
speaking, though, I don't think it's a gnome-terminal bug. I think it's
a much higher level issue that should be brought up in some core
developer mailing list.

I believe it's the distro's responsibility to ship glib, glibc and vim
so that all use the same Unicode version.

(Or even better, but it takes more time and a heavy refactoring: There
should be a single core Unicode library that glibc, glib, vim etc. all
depend on. Unfortunately I find it unlikely to get implemented.)

** Bug watch added: GNOME Bug Tracker #772812
   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=772812

** Bug watch added: GNOME Bug Tracker #772890
   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=772890

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1665140

Title:
  Emoji that should be wide, according to Unicode 9, display incorrectly
  in the terminal

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