Talk:Box-drawing characters

Bad description

What do "box drawing characters" have to do with the Web? Also, why does the description say what they are useless for instead of what they are useful for? Seems to me that the original editor wanted to define these from an extremely narrow perspective. 195.82.190.108 (talk) 00:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that you are selectively putting too much emphasis on particular sentences. It begins by saying where they are useful ("in text user interfaces to draw various frames and boxes.") and then goes on to say that they are not so useful in GUI applications. That point is a bit more forceful than I would like but it isn't wrong. As for the web, that only receives a passing mention, which indeed it should, but it makes its purpose perfectly clear in my eyes. If user comments are restricted to unformatted plain text then the box drawing characters allow for boxes or rules to be drawn in user comments. Maybe this isn't used so much in actual posts but I've certainly seen it in signatures. CrispMuncher (talk) 14:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The image

How come the image, which supposedly is able to show the characters properly even if the browser can't, doesn't show any difference between the thick and the thin versions of the characters? 136.163.203.3 10:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's a better screenshot:

Unicode_Box_Drawing_(2500-257F)_Revised.gif is a screenshot I took to show how it should look. I think the font being used is DejaVu Sans Mono. I'll try to figure out how to put the image on the page, but I'm pretty new here... Notostraca 19:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Still not satisfactory for showing the box drawing characters, because of lack of spacing (example: Row 2540. Where does each character start and end?). I’ve created a new image to replace it. --Shlomi Tal ☜ 10:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Sinclair stuff

Should things like the ZX81/Sinclair pseudographics be mentioned here (e.g., for the dithering patterns in the character set)? --BACbKA 22:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

also, what about characters like ▁ ▂ ▃ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ (unicode 0x2581 to 0x2588) ?--TiagoTiago 20:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

They're called Block Elements. Added. EdC (talk) 02:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

ASCII Line Drawing

is it really not possible to make a chunk of the page render using a monospaced font that contains those chars in all the more common browsers using the WikiMedia system? was it really necessary to use tables and non-breaking spaces and whatever? --TiagoTiago (talk) 04:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Changed it back to using plain ascii in a pre. If someone's browser can't display ascii art on this page, it won't be able to display it anywhere else either, so no use catering to the broken thing with a table. 216.239.45.4 (talk) 22:51, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Only one of the drawings is in pre, what about the previous ones? --TiagoTiago (talk) 14:37, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I just checked the HTML output generated by Template:Box-drawing sample, and it outputs this:

<pre style="line-height: 1.0; font-family: consolas,lucida console,courier new,courier,monospace;">
┌─┬┐  ╔═╦╗  ╓─╥╖  ╒═╤╕
│ ││  ║ ║║  ║ ║║  │ ││
├─┼┤  ╠═╬╣  ╟─╫╢  ╞═╪╡
└─┴┘  ╚═╩╝  ╙─╨╜  ╘═╧╛
┌───────────────────┐
│  ╔═══╗ Some Text  │▒
│  ╚═╦═╝ in the box │▒
╞═╤══╩══╤═══════════╡▒
│ ├──┬──┤           │▒
│ └──┴──┘           │▒
└───────────────────┘▒
 ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
</pre>

This should work just fine on any browser, but just to make sure I checked it on six different browsers. It looked fin on all of them. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC) --Guy Macon (talk) 00:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Your mobile device doesn't display a monospaced font when the HTLM clearly tells it to. Wikipedia should not attempt to accommodate your broken device. Instead, you should report the bug to the vendor who wrote the code that fails such a basic task. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:56, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

How does the "style" work? Does it pick the first, or the last, font that exists? It seems like removing "courier new" from the list will fix your phone. Personally I don't see why it does not just say "monospace", why are the other fonts there at all?Spitzak (talk) 19:11, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

What the style is saying (suggesting, really; you can set your own style in the browser that overrides what is in the style in the HTML) is: Set the line height equal to the character height (avoids horizontal gaps). Use the consolas font if you have it. If not, use the lucida console font if you have it. If not, use the courier new font if you have it. If not, use the courier font if you have it. If not, use whatever your default monospace font is -- all browsers have a default monospace font.

I agree with Wikipedia's choices here. Consolas is a good first choice. It's a good looking ClearType font with all the usual line drawing characters and is included in Windows Vista and later, Word, Excel, etc. Lucida console is pretty close in apperance to consolas, and is available in some older MS systems like Windows 2000. Courier New works as far back as Windows 3.1. (Apple, Linux and Android all understand these fonts and either serve them up or serve up an almost identical open-source alternative) Courier is pretty much universal; IBM deliberately chose not to seek any copyright, trademark, or design patent protection. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:41, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Use

I wanted to use it in some french page, but it does only work as wanted (It works in edition mode but not in visualisation one, this is, it does depend of the zoom level!) Text is not always as large as drawing! I wonder if any alterative exist.

• With tables, I do not know how to let the table open to the right
• With svg, I do not know how to edit svg file by wiki.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicateur_d%27ordre_des_octets

01234567890123456789

╓─┬──┬X─┬──┬──────i────┬─
║·╎EF╎BB╎BF╎F0·A3·8E·B4╎...
║··EF·BB·BF╎F0·A3·8E·B4╎...
║┴┴EF BB BF╎F0 A3 8E B4╎...
║  EF BB BF╎F0 A3 8E B4╎...
╙─────i────┴──────X────┴───
┴┴┴𝟹𝙱·𝟹𝙱·𝟹𝟹╎𝙱𝟹·𝟹𝙱·3𝟹·𝙱3┴𝟹𝙱

012345667890123456789

Hey there. You didn't remember to sign your post with four tildes (~~~~), so I can't tell if you're still having this problem. If you still are, maybe I can help:

• The easiest way to solve your problem is to edit the svg, or Scalable Vector Graphic. It's designed to be re-sized. First, choose the "edit source" link, to go to edit mode. Now, where it says “[[File:example.svg]]”, change that to “[[File:example.svg| [some number] px]]”. (The number is usually somewhere from 50 to about 200).
  • If you wanted to increase your font size: do this (also in edit mode): “<big>Big Text</big>” to get “Big Text”. There are ways to get it smaller or larger, but you probably don't want that anyway.
  • Remember you can caption a picture. To do that, change “[[File:example.svg|150px|thumb|left]]” to “[[File:example.svg|150px|thumb|right| [Caption here] ]]” to get:

(The “ |thumb|right| ” part tells it to use a thumbnail and align to the right)

 [Caption here] 

• You also said “With tables, I do not know how to let the table open to the right”. But I wasn't able to understand what you meant :/

Your problem is more of a coding problem than something that can be helped here. The Help Desk (in English en Français) or the Picture Tutorial (in English en Français) might be better places to go.

Cheers. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 12:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Nice work, Picasso.

http://i.imgur.com/CPsHqYN.png 124.188.145.86 (talk) 02:11, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

https://i.imgur.com/Hz272Vb.png It still looks a bit busted to me, but I have no power to change it, since its hidden in the source? TheJonyMyster (talk) 16:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Is there a reason there aren't as many single/double lines combinations as there are thin/thick?

Did they ran out of memory back when the standard was first developed, or somehow they didn't thought there would be an use for those variations for some reason? --TiagoTiago (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

More likely it was because existing character sets did not cover the variations which you might expect. TEDickey (talk) 00:37, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

But why didn't they? --TiagoTiago (talk) 07:20, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

It looks like somebody decided to support all combinations of none, thin, and thick segments (3^4(all combinations) - 1(blank) = 80). Not sure why as such thick/thin combinations were pretty rare and they did not copy characters from more popular graphics sets.

Adding a full set of single+double combinations would add (3^4 - 2^4(non-double ones and blank) = 65) more. It looks like they did not include the ones with one = segment (4) and all the ones with -= straight lines ((4 orientations of 3^2 - 4(counted twice) = 32), which leaves 29, which is how many there are. This is also exactly the set provided on the IBM PC.Spitzak (talk) 19:38, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Why not "Box-drawing characters" (plural)?

Why the article title is "Box-drawing character" and not ""Box-drawing characters"?

This looks just plain wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.66.226.247 (talk) 22:51, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Why limit it to computing?

I have reason to believe that box-drawing characters were around long before computers. Here is a book from the 1470's (Regiomontanus's "Kalender"), which uses what appear to be box-drawing characters in its tables: [[1]] 2601:18A:C500:C00:40B4:7EC2:17AC:6153 (talk) 06:32, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

I think that is a great example of it being used for movable type. Spitzak (talk) 20:43, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Article needs to be updated?

The "Historical" subsection says "Some of these sets, such as Commodore's PETSCII, include box-drawing symbols with no corresponding Unicode character", but many of these may have been recently added to Unicode in the Symbols for Legacy Computing block... AnonMoos (talk) 17:23, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Halfwidth vertical bar

@Spitzak: you reverted my edit with the rationale that the fullwidth vertical bar does not redirect here. That's not what I said in my edit summary, I said that the halfwidth vertical bar redirects here, or to be more precise U+FFE8 ￨ HALFWIDTH FORMS LIGHT VERTICAL and that one does redirect here (￨). In fact, your edit summary is wrong about that anyway. U+2502 │ BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT VERTICAL (the fullwidth veritcal bar) does redirect here (│). I hope I also demonstrated that while, yes "there is no half/full variations of box drawing" this character has both a fullwidth and a halfwidth version. Nickps (talk) 11:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I thought you were talking about the | character Spitzak (talk) 13:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense. I should have made it clearer since they look the same. Sorry about that and for the tone of my original message. Nickps (talk) 14:11, 7 April 2024 (UTC)