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Box-drawing character

March 03, 2023

The character U+2500 ─ BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL redirects here. It is not to be confused with the em dash ⟨—⟩
This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. These characters are characterised by being designed to be connected horizontally and/or vertically with adjacent characters, which requires proper alignment. Box-drawing characters therefore typically only work well with monospaced fonts. In graphical user interfaces, these characters are much less useful as it is more simple and appropriate to draw lines and rectangles directly with graphical APIs. However, they are still useful for command-line interfaces and plaintext comments within source code.

Midnight Commander using box-drawing characters in a terminal emulator

Other types of box-drawing characters are block elements, shade characters, and terminal graphic characters, these can be used for filling regions of the screen and portraying drop shadows.

Encodings

Unicode

Box Drawing

Unicode includes 128 such characters in the Box Drawing block.[1] In many Unicode fonts only the subset that is also available in the IBM PC character set (see below) will exist, due to it being defined as part of the WGL4 character set.

Box Drawing[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+250x ─ ━ │ ┃ ┄ ┅ ┆ ┇ ┈ ┉ ┊ ┋ ┌ ┍ ┎ ┏
U+251x ┐ ┑ ┒ ┓ └ ┕ ┖ ┗ ┘ ┙ ┚ ┛ ├ ┝ ┞ ┟
U+252x ┠ ┡ ┢ ┣ ┤ ┥ ┦ ┧ ┨ ┩ ┪ ┫ ┬ ┭ ┮ ┯
U+253x ┰ ┱ ┲ ┳ ┴ ┵ ┶ ┷ ┸ ┹ ┺ ┻ ┼ ┽ ┾ ┿
U+254x ╀ ╁ ╂ ╃ ╄ ╅ ╆ ╇ ╈ ╉ ╊ ╋ ╌ ╍ ╎ ╏
U+255x ═ ║ ╒ ╓ ╔ ╕ ╖ ╗ ╘ ╙ ╚ ╛ ╜ ╝ ╞ ╟
U+256x ╠ ╡ ╢ ╣ ╤ ╥ ╦ ╧ ╨ ╩ ╪ ╫ ╬ ╭ ╮ ╯
U+257x ╰ ╱ ╲ ╳ ╴ ╵ ╶ ╷ ╸ ╹ ╺ ╻ ╼ ╽ ╾ ╿
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0

The image below is provided as a quick reference for these symbols on systems that are unable to display them directly:

 

Block Elements

The Block Elements Unicode block includes shading characters. 32 characters are included in the block.

Block Elements[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+258x ▀ ▁ ▂ ▃ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ ▉ ▊ ▋ ▌ ▍ ▎ ▏
U+259x ▐ ░ ▒ ▓ ▔ ▕ ▖ ▗ ▘ ▙ ▚ ▛ ▜ ▝ ▞ ▟
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0

Symbols for Legacy Computing

In version 13.0, Unicode was extended with another block containing many graphics characters, Symbols for Legacy Computing, which includes a few box-drawing characters and other symbols used by obsolete operating systems (mostly from the 1980s):

Symbols for Legacy Computing[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1FB0x 🬀 🬁 🬂 🬃 🬄 🬅 🬆 🬇 🬈 🬉 🬊 🬋 🬌 🬍 🬎 🬏
U+1FB1x 🬐 🬑 🬒 🬓 🬔 🬕 🬖 🬗 🬘 🬙 🬚 🬛 🬜 🬝 🬞 🬟
U+1FB2x 🬠 🬡 🬢 🬣 🬤 🬥 🬦 🬧 🬨 🬩 🬪 🬫 🬬 🬭 🬮 🬯
U+1FB3x 🬰 🬱 🬲 🬳 🬴 🬵 🬶 🬷 🬸 🬹 🬺 🬻 🬼 🬽 🬾 🬿
U+1FB4x 🭀 🭁 🭂 🭃 🭄 🭅 🭆 🭇 🭈 🭉 🭊 🭋 🭌 🭍 🭎 🭏
U+1FB5x 🭐 🭑 🭒 🭓 🭔 🭕 🭖 🭗 🭘 🭙 🭚 🭛 🭜 🭝 🭞 🭟
U+1FB6x 🭠 🭡 🭢 🭣 🭤 🭥 🭦 🭧 🭨 🭩 🭪 🭫 🭬 🭭 🭮 🭯
U+1FB7x 🭰 🭱 🭲 🭳 🭴 🭵 🭶 🭷 🭸 🭹 🭺 🭻 🭼 🭽 🭾 🭿
U+1FB8x 🮀 🮁 🮂 🮃 🮄 🮅 🮆 🮇 🮈 🮉 🮊 🮋 🮌 🮍 🮎 🮏
U+1FB9x 🮐 🮑 🮒 🮔 🮕 🮖 🮗 🮘 🮙 🮚 🮛 🮜 🮝 🮞 🮟
U+1FBAx 🮠 🮡 🮢 🮣 🮤 🮥 🮦 🮧 🮨 🮩 🮪 🮫 🮬 🮭 🮮 🮯
U+1FBBx 🮰 🮱 🮲 🮳 🮴 🮵 🮶 🮷 🮸 🮹 🮺 🮻 🮼 🮽 🮾 🮿
U+1FBCx 🯀 🯁 🯂 🯃 🯄 🯅 🯆 🯇 🯈 🯉 🯊
U+1FBDx  
U+1FBEx  
U+1FBFx 🯰 🯱 🯲 🯳 🯴 🯵 🯶 🯷 🯸 🯹
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

The image below is provided as a quick reference for these symbols on systems that are unable to display them directly:

 

DOS

The hardware code page of the original IBM PC supplied the following box-drawing characters, in what DOS now calls code page 437. This subset of the Unicode box-drawing characters is thus included in WGL4 and is far more popular and likely to be rendered correctly:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
B ░ ▒ ▓ │ ┤ ╡ ╢ ╖ ╕ ╣ ║ ╗ ╝ ╜ ╛ ┐
C └ ┴ ┬ ├ ─ ┼ ╞ ╟ ╚ ╔ ╩ ╦ ╠ ═ ╬ ╧
D ╨ ╤ ╥ ╙ ╘ ╒ ╓ ╫ ╪ ┘ ┌ █ ▄ ▌ ▐ ▀

The integral halves are also box drawing as they are used alongside 0xB3:

4 5
F ⌠ ⌡

Their number is further limited to 28 on those code pages that replace the 18 characters that combine single and double lines, the left and right half blocks, as well as integral halves with other, usually alphabetic, characters (such as code page 850):

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
B ░ ▒ ▓ │ ┤ ╣ ║ ╗ ╝ ┐
C └ ┴ ┬ ├ ─ ┼ ╚ ╔ ╩ ╦ ╠ ═ ╬
D ┘ ┌ █ ▄ ▀

Note: The non-double characters are the thin (light) characters (U+2500, U+2502), not the bold (heavy) characters (U+2501, U+2503).

Some OEM DOS computers supported other character sets, for example the Hewlett-Packard HP 110 / HP Portable and HP 110 Plus / HP Portable Plus, where in a modified version of the character set box-drawing characters were added in reserved areas of their normal HP Roman-8 character set.[2][3]

[2][3] 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
8 ╝ ╗ ╔ ╚ ╣ ╩ ╦ ╠ ═ ║ ╬
9 ▀ ▄ ┘ ┐ ┌ └ ┤ ┴ ┬ ├ ─ │ ┼ █

Unix, CP/M, BBS

On many Unix systems and early dial-up bulletin board systems the only common standard for box-drawing characters was the VT100 alternate character set (see also: DEC Special Graphics). The escape sequence Esc ( 0 switched the codes for lower-case ASCII letters to draw this set, and the sequence Esc ( B switched back:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
6 ┘ ┐ ┌ └ ┼
7 ─ ├ ┤ ┴ ┬ │

On some terminals, these characters are not available at all, and the complexity of the escape sequences discouraged their use, so often only ASCII characters that approximate box-drawing characters are used, such as - (hyphen-minus), | (vertical bar), _ (underscore), = (equal sign) and + (plus sign) in a kind of ASCII art fashion.

Modern Unix terminal emulators use Unicode and thus have access to the line-drawing characters listed above.

Historical

Many microcomputers of the 1970s and 1980s had their own proprietary character sets, which also included box-drawing characters. Some of these sets, such as Commodore's PETSCII, include box-drawing symbols with no corresponding Unicode character.

Sinclair

The Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and Spectrum included a set of text semigraphics with block elements and dithering patterns in the ZX80 character set.

   
 

BBC and Acorn

The BBC Micro could utilize the Teletext 7-bit character set, which had 128 box-drawing characters, whose code points were shared with the regular alphanumeric and punctuation characters. Control characters were used to switch between regular text and box drawing.[4]

Teletext G1 Block Mosaics Set:[5]

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
2                                
3                                
6                                
7                                

The BBC Master and later Acorn computers have the soft font by default defined with line drawing characters.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
A ╷ ╶ ┌ ╴ ┐ ─ ┬ ╵ │ └ ├ ┘ ┤ ┴ ┼
B ╭ ╮ ╰ ╯

Amstrad

The Amstrad CPC character set also has soft characters defined by default as block and line drawing characters.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
8 ▘ ▝ ▀ ▖ ▍ ▞ ▛ ▗ ▚ ▐ ▜ ▃ ▙ ▟ ▉
9 ╵ ╶ └ ╷ │ ┌ ├ ╴ ┘ ─ ┴ ┐ ┤ ┬ ┼

The CP/M Plus character set used on various Amstrad computers of the CPC, PCW and Spectrum families included a rich set of line-drawing characters as well:[6][7][8]

[6] 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
8 ╧ ╟ ╚ ╤ ║ ╔ ╠ ╢ ╝ ═ ╩ ╗ ╣ ╦ ╬
9 ╵ ╶ └ ╷ │ ┌ ├ ╴ ┘ ─ ┴ ┐ ┤ ┬ ┼

Apple

MouseText is a set of display characters for the Apple IIc, IIe, and IIGS that includes box-drawing characters.

Teletext

The World System Teletext (WST) uses pixel-drawing characters for some graphics. A character cell is divided in 2×3 regions, and 26 = 64 code positions are allocated for all possible combinations of pixels.[9] These characters were added to the Unicode standard in Version 13.[10]

Others

Some recent embedded systems also use proprietary character sets, usually extensions to ISO 8859 character sets, which include box-drawing characters or other special symbols.

Character code

On many platforms, the character shape is determined programmatically from the character code.

  • ZX Spectrum block characters:
    0x80 + topright*1 + topleft*2 + bottomright*4 + bottomleft*8
  • Amstrad CPC block characters:
    0x80 + topleft*1 + topright*2 + bottomleft*4 + bottomright*8
  • Amstrad CPC line characters:
    0x90 + up*1 + right*2 + down*4 + left*8
  • BBC Master line characters:
    0xA0 + down*1 + right*2 + left*4 + up*8
  • Teletext block characters:
    0xA0 + topleft*1 + topright*2 + middleleft*4 + middleright*8 + bottomleft*16 + bottomright*64
  • DOS line draw characters are not ordered in any programmatic manner, and calculating a particular character shape needs to use a look-up table.

Examples

Sample diagrams made out of the standard box-drawing characters, using a monospaced font: 

┌─┬┐ ╔═╦╗ ╓─╥╖ ╒═╤╕ │ ││ ║ ║║ ║ ║║ │ ││ ├─┼┤ ╠═╬╣ ╟─╫╢ ╞═╪╡ └─┴┘ ╚═╩╝ ╙─╨╜ ╘═╧╛ ┌───────────────────┐ │ ╔═══╗ Some Text │▒ │ ╚═╦═╝ in the box │▒ ╞═╤══╩══╤═══════════╡▒ │ ├──┬──┤ │▒ │ └──┴──┘ │▒ └───────────────────┘▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒

See also

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Text mode box drawing.

References

  1. ^ Box Drawing U+2500-U+257F, The Unicode Standard Code Charts
  2. ^ a b Hewlett-Packard - Technical Reference Manual - Portable PLUS (1 ed.). Corvallis, OR, USA: Hewlett-Packard Company, Portable Computer Division. August 1985. 45559-90001. Retrieved 2016-11-27.
  3. ^ a b Hewlett-Packard - Technical Reference Manual - Portable PLUS (PDF) (2 ed.). Portable Computer Division, Corvallis, OR, USA: Hewlett-Packard Company. December 1986 [August 1985]. 45559-90006. (PDF) from the original on 2016-11-28. Retrieved 2016-11-27.
  4. ^ Broadcast Teletext Specification, September 1976 (as HTML or )
  5. ^ https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_i_ets/300700_300799/300706/01_60/ets_300706e01p.pdf#page=126[bare URL PDF]
  6. ^ a b "Appendix II: CP/M Plus character sets / II.1 The complete character set (Language 0)". Spectrum +3 CP/M Plus manual (User Manual). from the original on 2009-10-15. Retrieved 2017-07-10. [1]
  7. ^ Elliott, John C. (2015-04-04). "Amstrad Extended BIOS Internals". Seasip.info. from the original on 2017-07-15. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
  8. ^ "Amstrad CP/M Plus character set". from the original on 2017-07-15. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
  9. ^ Wiels. "TeleText - Het Protocol" (in Dutch). Mosaic characters. from the original on 2017-12-22. Retrieved 2017-12-21.
  10. ^ "Symbols for Legacy Computing" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2020-04-19.

March 03, 2023
drawing, character, character, 2500, drawings, light, horizontal, redirects, here, confused, with, dash, this, article, contains, special, characters, without, proper, rendering, support, question, marks, boxes, other, symbols, also, known, line, drawing, char. The character U 2500 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL redirects here It is not to be confused with the em dash This article contains special characters Without proper rendering support you may see question marks boxes or other symbols Box drawing characters also known as line drawing characters are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes These characters are characterised by being designed to be connected horizontally and or vertically with adjacent characters which requires proper alignment Box drawing characters therefore typically only work well with monospaced fonts In graphical user interfaces these characters are much less useful as it is more simple and appropriate to draw lines and rectangles directly with graphical APIs However they are still useful for command line interfaces and plaintext comments within source code Midnight Commander using box drawing characters in a terminal emulator Other types of box drawing characters are block elements shade characters and terminal graphic characters these can be used for filling regions of the screen and portraying drop shadows Contents 1 Encodings 1 1 Unicode 1 1 1 Box Drawing 1 1 2 Block Elements 1 1 3 Symbols for Legacy Computing 1 2 DOS 1 3 Unix CP M BBS 1 4 Historical 1 4 1 Sinclair 1 4 2 BBC and Acorn 1 4 3 Amstrad 1 4 4 Apple 1 4 5 Teletext 1 4 6 Others 1 5 Character code 2 Examples 3 See also 4 ReferencesEncodings EditUnicode Edit Box Drawing Edit Unicode includes 128 such characters in the Box Drawing block 1 In many Unicode fonts only the subset that is also available in the IBM PC character set see below will exist due to it being defined as part of the WGL4 character set Box Drawing 1 Official Unicode Consortium code chart PDF 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E FU 250x U 251x U 252x U 253x U 254x U 255x U 256x U 257x Notes 1 As of Unicode version 15 0The image below is provided as a quick reference for these symbols on systems that are unable to display them directly Block Elements Edit The Block Elements Unicode block includes shading characters 32 characters are included in the block Block Elements 1 Official Unicode Consortium code chart PDF 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E FU 258x U 259x Notes 1 As of Unicode version 15 0Symbols for Legacy Computing Edit In version 13 0 Unicode was extended with another block containing many graphics characters Symbols for Legacy Computing which includes a few box drawing characters and other symbols used by obsolete operating systems mostly from the 1980s Symbols for Legacy Computing 1 2 Official Unicode Consortium code chart PDF 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E FU 1FB0x U 1FB1x U 1FB2x U 1FB3x U 1FB4x U 1FB5x U 1FB6x U 1FB7x U 1FB8x U 1FB9x U 1FBAx U 1FBBx U 1FBCx U 1FBDx U 1FBEx U 1FBFx 🯰 🯱 🯲 🯳 🯴 🯵 🯶 🯷 🯸 🯹Notes 1 As of Unicode version 15 0 2 Grey areas indicate non assigned code pointsThe image below is provided as a quick reference for these symbols on systems that are unable to display them directly DOS Edit The hardware code page of the original IBM PC supplied the following box drawing characters in what DOS now calls code page 437 This subset of the Unicode box drawing characters is thus included in WGL4 and is far more popular and likely to be rendered correctly 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E FB C D The integral halves are also box drawing as they are used alongside 0xB3 4 5F Their number is further limited to 28 on those code pages that replace the 18 characters that combine single and double lines the left and right half blocks as well as integral halves with other usually alphabetic characters such as code page 850 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E FB C D Note The non double characters are the thin light characters U 2500 U 2502 not the bold heavy characters U 2501 U 2503 Some OEM DOS computers supported other character sets for example the Hewlett Packard HP 110 HP Portable and HP 110 Plus HP Portable Plus where in a modified version of the character set box drawing characters were added in reserved areas of their normal HP Roman 8 character set 2 3 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F8 9 Unix CP M BBS Edit On many Unix systems and early dial up bulletin board systems the only common standard for box drawing characters was the VT100 alternate character set see also DEC Special Graphics The escape sequence Esc 0 switched the codes for lower case ASCII letters to draw this set and the sequence Esc B switched back 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F6 7 On some terminals these characters are not available at all and the complexity of the escape sequences discouraged their use so often only ASCII characters that approximate box drawing characters are used such as hyphen minus vertical bar underscore equal sign and plus sign in a kind of ASCII art fashion Modern Unix terminal emulators use Unicode and thus have access to the line drawing characters listed above Historical Edit Many microcomputers of the 1970s and 1980s had their own proprietary character sets which also included box drawing characters Some of these sets such as Commodore s PETSCII include box drawing symbols with no corresponding Unicode character Sinclair Edit The Sinclair ZX80 ZX81 and Spectrum included a set of text semigraphics with block elements and dithering patterns in the ZX80 character set BBC and Acorn Edit The BBC Micro could utilize the Teletext 7 bit character set which had 128 box drawing characters whose code points were shared with the regular alphanumeric and punctuation characters Control characters were used to switch between regular text and box drawing 4 Teletext G1 Block Mosaics Set 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F2 3 6 7 The BBC Master and later Acorn computers have the soft font by default defined with line drawing characters 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E FA B Amstrad Edit The Amstrad CPC character set also has soft characters defined by default as block and line drawing characters 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F8 9 The CP M Plus character set used on various Amstrad computers of the CPC PCW and Spectrum families included a rich set of line drawing characters as well 6 7 8 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F8 9 Apple Edit MouseText is a set of display characters for the Apple IIc IIe and IIGS that includes box drawing characters Teletext Edit The World System Teletext WST uses pixel drawing characters for some graphics A character cell is divided in 2 3 regions and 26 64 code positions are allocated for all possible combinations of pixels 9 These characters were added to the Unicode standard in Version 13 10 Others Edit Some recent embedded systems also use proprietary character sets usually extensions to ISO 8859 character sets which include box drawing characters or other special symbols Character code Edit On many platforms the character shape is determined programmatically from the character code ZX Spectrum block characters 0x80 topright 1 topleft 2 bottomright 4 bottomleft 8 Amstrad CPC block characters 0x80 topleft 1 topright 2 bottomleft 4 bottomright 8 Amstrad CPC line characters 0x90 up 1 right 2 down 4 left 8 BBC Master line characters 0xA0 down 1 right 2 left 4 up 8 Teletext block characters 0xA0 topleft 1 topright 2 middleleft 4 middleright 8 bottomleft 16 bottomright 64 DOS line draw characters are not ordered in any programmatic manner and calculating a particular character shape needs to use a look up table Examples EditSample diagrams made out of the standard box drawing characters using a monospaced font Some Text in the box See also Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Text mode box drawing Unicode symbols Dingbat Box Drawing Unicode Block Block Elements Unicode Block Geometric Shapes Unicode Block List of Unicode characters Text based computing Text semigraphics ASCII art and ANSI art MouseTextReferences Edit Box Drawing U 2500 U 257F The Unicode Standard Code Charts a b Hewlett Packard Technical Reference Manual Portable PLUS 1 ed Corvallis OR USA Hewlett Packard Company Portable Computer Division August 1985 45559 90001 Retrieved 2016 11 27 a b Hewlett Packard Technical Reference Manual Portable PLUS PDF 2 ed Portable Computer Division Corvallis OR USA Hewlett Packard Company December 1986 August 1985 45559 90006 Archived PDF from the original on 2016 11 28 Retrieved 2016 11 27 Broadcast Teletext Specification September 1976 as HTML or scans of original document https www etsi org deliver etsi i ets 300700 300799 300706 01 60 ets 300706e01p pdf page 126 bare URL PDF a b Appendix II CP M Plus character sets II 1 The complete character set Language 0 Spectrum 3 CP M Plus manual User Manual Archived from the original on 2009 10 15 Retrieved 2017 07 10 1 Elliott John C 2015 04 04 Amstrad Extended BIOS Internals Seasip info Archived from the original on 2017 07 15 Retrieved 2017 07 15 Amstrad CP M Plus character set Archived from the original on 2017 07 15 Retrieved 2017 07 15 Wiels TeleText Het Protocol in Dutch Mosaic characters Archived from the original on 2017 12 22 Retrieved 2017 12 21 Symbols for Legacy Computing PDF Unicode Consortium Retrieved 2020 04 19 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Box drawing character amp oldid 1135953998, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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