inzerosight/docs/zwus.md

ZWUS Standards & Bases

Choosing the right ZWUS base involves balancing payload size against platform compatibility.

Choosing the Optimal Base

• Higher Bases (e.g. ZWUS-8): You generally want to use the highest standard possible because higher bases encode more data per character, resulting in significantly more compact zero-width payloads and smaller storage footprints.

• Compatibility Trade-off: The higher the base, the larger the alphabet of zero-width Unicode characters required. Certain messaging apps, web services, or platforms may strip, sanitize, or fail to hide some of these characters properly (sometimes rendering visible space or placeholder boxes). If a platform alters or rejects certain characters, lower bases like ZWUS-6 or ZWUS-3 offer higher compatibility by restricting the alphabet to a smaller, safer subset of zero-width characters.

Automatic Detection with Sign

If you enable Sign when encoding, an invisible, collision-free signature is attached to the secret message. When decoding—either in the extension popup or via the on-screen overlay—inØsight automatically identifies and switches to the correct base and cipher every time. You never need to remember or guess which standard was used.

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Unicode Alphabet by Standard

ZWUS-3

Uses 4 unique characters (base 3 digits + delimiter):

Role	Unicode	Character Name
Separator	U+00AD	Soft Hyphen
Digit 0	U+180E	Mongolian Vowel Separator
Digit 1	U+200B	Zero Width Space
Digit 2	U+200D	Zero Width Joiner

ZWUS-6

Uses 7 unique characters (base 6 digits + delimiter):

Role	Unicode	Character Name
Separator	U+200C	Zero Width Non-Joiner
Digit 0	U+200D	Zero Width Joiner
Digit 1	U+200F	Right-to-Left Mark
Digit 2	U+00AD	Soft Hyphen
Digit 3	U+2060	Word Joiner
Digit 4	U+200B	Zero Width Space
Digit 5	U+200E	Left-to-Right Mark

ZWUS-8

Uses 9 unique characters (base 8 digits + delimiter):

Role	Unicode	Character Name
Separator	U+200C	Zero Width Non-Joiner
Digit 0	U+200D	Zero Width Joiner
Digit 1	U+200F	Right-to-Left Mark
Digit 2	U+00AD	Soft Hyphen
Digit 3	U+2060	Word Joiner
Digit 4	U+200B	Zero Width Space
Digit 5	U+200E	Left-to-Right Mark
Digit 6	U+180E	Mongolian Vowel Separator
Digit 7	U+FEFF	Zero Width No-Break Space (BOM)