3 ms·

It‘s unfortunate that the fill blocks seem to dip below the baseline. It looks untidy.

by Tomte 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
divbzero 2y ago
OP discusses the below-the-baseline issue describes it as “annoying but not a deal breaker”. If this is a deal breaker because you’re aspiring for Edward Tufte levels of visualization purity, OP also offers an alternative that omits below-the-baseline U+2584 and U+2588. The trade off is having fewer unequally sized buckets for the data. (Could there be font faces without this rendering issue?)
- divbzero 2y ago
  > (Could there be font faces without this rendering issue?) A comment under OP suggests that the rendering issue is font-dependent. When I view a Unicode sparkline on a test page [1], the rendering issue occurs using Arial, Courier New, Gill Sans, Helvetica, or Times New Roman, but appears to be fixed if I use Georgia, Menlo, or Comic Sans. [1]: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sparkline_in_unicode https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sparkline_in_unicode
- uj8efdjkfdshf 2y ago
  If you're going to pick a font to avoid this issue you might as well as define your own custom sparkline font with fancy ligatures.
  - divbzero 2y ago
    That’s a very interesting idea. Apparently, someone has actually tried this [1] and it looks pretty good [2]. [1]: https://github.com/aftertheflood/sparks https://github.com/aftertheflood/sparks [2]: https://observablehq.com/@tomgp/after-the-flood-i-sparks-i-typeface https://observablehq.com/@tomgp/after-the-flood-i-sparks-i-t...
Gare 2y ago
On (mobile) Firefox they don't. And all are of equal width.
rbanffy 2y ago
It really depends on the font choice and terminal engine. Some terminals (such as VTE, which is the base for most Gnome terminals) renders blocks and boxes without using a font, which makes them perfectly fit the character cell. With Unicode 16, which is coming out very shortly, there will be 2x4 mosaics (originally identified on Kaypro CP/M machines), which have about half the vertical resolution of the blocks, but twice the time resolution (and allows us to leave Braille for what it was intended for). After this post came out, Unicode 13 introduced Teletext 2x3 mosaics and their "smoothed" versions (with diagonal lines). Those are also useful for sparklines.
TheRealPomax 2y ago
That depends entirely on the font used.

It‘s unfortunate that the fill blocks seem to dip below the baseline. It looks untidy.

by Tomte 2y ago

It‘s unfortunate that the fill blocks seem to dip below the baseline. It looks untidy.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

divbzero 2y ago

OP discusses the below-the-baseline issue describes it as “annoying but not a deal breaker”. If this is a deal breaker because you’re aspiring for Edward Tufte levels of visualization purity, OP also offers an alternative that omits below-the-baseline U+2584 and U+2588. The trade off is having fewer unequally sized buckets for the data. (Could there be font faces without this rendering issue?)

divbzero 2y ago
> (Could there be font faces without this rendering issue?) A comment under OP suggests that the rendering issue is font-dependent. When I view a Unicode sparkline on a test page [1], the rendering issue occurs using Arial, Courier New, Gill Sans, Helvetica, or Times New Roman, but appears to be fixed if I use Georgia, Menlo, or Comic Sans. [1]: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sparkline_in_unicode https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sparkline_in_unicode
uj8efdjkfdshf 2y ago
If you're going to pick a font to avoid this issue you might as well as define your own custom sparkline font with fancy ligatures.
- divbzero 2y ago
  That’s a very interesting idea. Apparently, someone has actually tried this [1] and it looks pretty good [2]. [1]: https://github.com/aftertheflood/sparks https://github.com/aftertheflood/sparks [2]: https://observablehq.com/@tomgp/after-the-flood-i-sparks-i-typeface https://observablehq.com/@tomgp/after-the-flood-i-sparks-i-t...

Gare 2y ago

On (mobile) Firefox they don't. And all are of equal width.

rbanffy 2y ago

It really depends on the font choice and terminal engine. Some terminals (such as VTE, which is the base for most Gnome terminals) renders blocks and boxes without using a font, which makes them perfectly fit the character cell. With Unicode 16, which is coming out very shortly, there will be 2x4 mosaics (originally identified on Kaypro CP/M machines), which have about half the vertical resolution of the blocks, but twice the time resolution (and allows us to leave Braille for what it was intended for). After this post came out, Unicode 13 introduced Teletext 2x3 mosaics and their "smoothed" versions (with diagonal lines). Those are also useful for sparklines.

TheRealPomax 2y ago

That depends entirely on the font used.