6 ms·

That kind of box drawing was pretty common on 8-bit character map systems, like Commodore 64 and I'd guess also on game consoles, like Nintendo Entertainment Sy

That kind of box drawing was pretty common on 8-bit character map systems, like Commodore 64 and I'd guess also on game consoles, like Nintendo Entertainment System.

ThomW 4y ago
I was going to say “this guy has never played around on the C=64!” lol
kristopolous 4y ago
just want to point out to people to not be discouraged by things having been done before. Always worth saying ...
- vardump 4y ago
  Couldn't agree more!
- klyrs 4y ago
  I'd like to discourage people from naming things after themselves, when those things have already been done before. https://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-researcher-discovers-integration-gets-75-citations/ https://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-research...
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    I don't have domain expertise here at all but I'd like to hear the other side. Trapezoid estimation I believe I learned when I was 15 or so as part of standard coursework. I would find it remarkable if all these accomplished scientific experimenters and scholars first encountered it here Not impossible but I think Occam's razor would suggest there might be domain specific nuances to the implementation that makes it special. On the other hand I've certainly encountered a ton of stupidly obvious techniques in my 30 years of programming which I thought were unremarkable only to discover people have developed a special language and narrative history of attribution to it. You swim through the jargon presuming it's profound and enlightening but then ultimately get disappointed. It's an emotionally impactful experience so I tend to remember it.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      That example is just one that sticks out in my mind particularly brightly. I'm a mathematician, and I have a particular distrust of people who name things after themselves, in large part because of the culture -- people who cite your work might choose to name it after you in recognition of your/its significance. And I still dislike that, because for example, Noether's Theorem isn't a unique identifier. The Trapezoid Rule, on the other hand, is named perfectly. There's some interesting discussion on stackexchange at [1], the comment I link to reports on some investigation they did. Apparently, the Tai of Tai's Model misinterpreted other people's use of the trapezoid rule, found that misinterpreted version to be faulty, re-invented it, and named it after herself. One assumes that it was an honest mistake, but it's a damned shame that it didn't get caught in review. [1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/103197 https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/103197
    - Arch-TK 4y ago
      There are no domain specific nuances. Please feel free to read it, it's very short: https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/17/2/152/17985/A-Mathematical-Model-for-the-Determination-of https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/17/2/152/17985/A-M... (PDF link at the bottom)
  - thayne 4y ago
    As someone who TAed for a physics class with a lot of premed students, that whole piece really resonates with me.
bawolff 4y ago
The article isn't really about box drawing generally, but box drawing with those specific characters.
- vardump 4y ago
  When you had just 256 unique 8x8 pixel characters to draw all of the game graphics, you tried to use as few as possible. For drawing a thin line rectangle, you need at least 4 characters. Which are exactly the ones mentioned in the blog post.
- vidarh 4y ago
  Yes, but the point being that having a two-colour per character restriction and box drawing with lines on one edge was common. E.g. here's "PETSCII" [1], the Commodore character set, and as you can see there's a number of characters that provides different thickness "borders" on the left/right/top/bottom. Here's a page with a number of "PETSCII" images using the same method to have borders in images with the other colour firmly on one side of the line [2] As for modern usage, here's a tiny image from my personal terminal text editor, which uses the same method with unicode to get a shaded transition between the line numbers and the main display area [3]. [1] https://www.petscii.de/images/PETSCII_MODE_02.png https://www.petscii.de/images/PETSCII_MODE_02.png [2] https://oldmachinery.blogspot.com/2020/09/petscii-petscii-petscii.html https://oldmachinery.blogspot.com/2020/09/petscii-petscii-pe... [3] https://imgur.com/a/LudA5nY https://imgur.com/a/LudA5nY
lifthrasiir 4y ago
Or ASCII arts: ____________ | | | Like this. | |____________|
- mkl 4y ago
  That's different. That has the same problem as the first image in the article: the background colour protrudes beyond the border. It also looks much worse than the box drawing characters.
Nomentatus 4y ago
QuickTitles, ancient DOS program I created long ago. Did a lot more than boxes.
anothernewdude 4y ago
The C64 allowed for custom graphic sets though. I'm surprised it isn't more common in the terminal if it is possible.
neilv 4y ago
And on the IBM PC (which, incidentally, was the best for high-performance UIs; better than anything one could do on Unix TTYs). A related trick was to adjust the colors so that, for example, the background for one character looks like foreground of an adjacent character. I used this to draw thick boxes in one program without wasting a couple extra rows of display. (Though the trick was revealed if you did a B&W screenshot printout. There was no text selection&copy&paste in MS-DOS at the time.)

That kind of box drawing was pretty common on 8-bit character map systems, like Commodore 64 and I'd guess also on game consoles, like Nintendo Entertainment System.

ThomW 4y ago

I was going to say “this guy has never played around on the C=64!” lol

kristopolous 4y ago

just want to point out to people to not be discouraged by things having been done before. Always worth saying ...

vardump 4y ago
Couldn't agree more!
klyrs 4y ago
I'd like to discourage people from naming things after themselves, when those things have already been done before. https://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-researcher-discovers-integration-gets-75-citations/ https://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-research...
- kristopolous 4y ago
  I don't have domain expertise here at all but I'd like to hear the other side. Trapezoid estimation I believe I learned when I was 15 or so as part of standard coursework. I would find it remarkable if all these accomplished scientific experimenters and scholars first encountered it here Not impossible but I think Occam's razor would suggest there might be domain specific nuances to the implementation that makes it special. On the other hand I've certainly encountered a ton of stupidly obvious techniques in my 30 years of programming which I thought were unremarkable only to discover people have developed a special language and narrative history of attribution to it. You swim through the jargon presuming it's profound and enlightening but then ultimately get disappointed. It's an emotionally impactful experience so I tend to remember it.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    That example is just one that sticks out in my mind particularly brightly. I'm a mathematician, and I have a particular distrust of people who name things after themselves, in large part because of the culture -- people who cite your work might choose to name it after you in recognition of your/its significance. And I still dislike that, because for example, Noether's Theorem isn't a unique identifier. The Trapezoid Rule, on the other hand, is named perfectly. There's some interesting discussion on stackexchange at [1], the comment I link to reports on some investigation they did. Apparently, the Tai of Tai's Model misinterpreted other people's use of the trapezoid rule, found that misinterpreted version to be faulty, re-invented it, and named it after herself. One assumes that it was an honest mistake, but it's a damned shame that it didn't get caught in review. [1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/103197 https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/103197
  - Arch-TK 4y ago
    There are no domain specific nuances. Please feel free to read it, it's very short: https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/17/2/152/17985/A-Mathematical-Model-for-the-Determination-of https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/17/2/152/17985/A-M... (PDF link at the bottom)
- thayne 4y ago
  As someone who TAed for a physics class with a lot of premed students, that whole piece really resonates with me.

bawolff 4y ago

The article isn't really about box drawing generally, but box drawing with those specific characters.

vardump 4y ago
When you had just 256 unique 8x8 pixel characters to draw all of the game graphics, you tried to use as few as possible. For drawing a thin line rectangle, you need at least 4 characters. Which are exactly the ones mentioned in the blog post.
vidarh 4y ago
Yes, but the point being that having a two-colour per character restriction and box drawing with lines on one edge was common. E.g. here's "PETSCII" [1], the Commodore character set, and as you can see there's a number of characters that provides different thickness "borders" on the left/right/top/bottom. Here's a page with a number of "PETSCII" images using the same method to have borders in images with the other colour firmly on one side of the line [2] As for modern usage, here's a tiny image from my personal terminal text editor, which uses the same method with unicode to get a shaded transition between the line numbers and the main display area [3]. [1] https://www.petscii.de/images/PETSCII_MODE_02.png https://www.petscii.de/images/PETSCII_MODE_02.png [2] https://oldmachinery.blogspot.com/2020/09/petscii-petscii-petscii.html https://oldmachinery.blogspot.com/2020/09/petscii-petscii-pe... [3] https://imgur.com/a/LudA5nY https://imgur.com/a/LudA5nY

lifthrasiir 4y ago

mkl 4y ago
That's different. That has the same problem as the first image in the article: the background colour protrudes beyond the border. It also looks much worse than the box drawing characters.

Nomentatus 4y ago

QuickTitles, ancient DOS program I created long ago. Did a lot more than boxes.

anothernewdude 4y ago

The C64 allowed for custom graphic sets though. I'm surprised it isn't more common in the terminal if it is possible.

neilv 4y ago

And on the IBM PC (which, incidentally, was the best for high-performance UIs; better than anything one could do on Unix TTYs). A related trick was to adjust the colors so that, for example, the background for one character looks like foreground of an adjacent character. I used this to draw thick boxes in one program without wasting a couple extra rows of display. (Though the trick was revealed if you did a B&W screenshot printout. There was no text selection&copy&paste in MS-DOS at the time.)