
Unscii – a bitmapped Unicode font for blocky graphics - detuur
http://pelulamu.net/unscii/
======
kristopolous
I had an adjacent project about 6 years ago which included a Unicode drawing
program, text engine and image converter
([https://github.com/kristopolous/unifig](https://github.com/kristopolous/unifig))
... I think the mirror I have at
[http://9ol.es/blocky/](http://9ol.es/blocky/) is still functional. Edit, no
it's not... I can bring it up to functional if people request.

I spent a decent amount of time on it, nobody paid any attention though. Oh
well, not everything's a winner.

~~~
djmips
Hey, I think it's cool. Would like to try.

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_arvin
Well, I'm ecstatic. What a beautiful font.

After seeing this, I was finally inspired to find out why BitchX wouldn't
display ANSI art correctly.

Turns out I needed a code 437 emulator! [1]

I can now use it the way it was meant to. Here it is paired with
unscii-16-full 12pt [2]

This isn't nostalgia, this is just _better_.

[1] [https://github.com/keaston/cp437](https://github.com/keaston/cp437)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/3Oj9Vsy.png](https://i.imgur.com/3Oj9Vsy.png)

~~~
masklinn
> Turns out I needed a code 437 emulator! [1]

So that… just converts from cp437 (output by the subprocess) to whatever the
"system encoding" (assumed to be the terminal's) is?

I'm surprised iconv or the like doesn't handle that natively. Or is the issue
that you still need to interact with the subprocess and iconv(1) only does
piping/non-interactive conversions?

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dukoid
It's a bit sad that many of the ETSI EN 300 706 V1.2.1 graphics characters (1,
section 15.7.2) are not available in Unicode.

I am maintaining a small program that renders images directly in the terminal
using unicode block graphics characters (2), and these would come really handy
to enhance the conversion...

1)
[https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/300700_300799/300706/01...](https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/300700_300799/300706/01.02.01_60/en_300706v010201p.pdf)

2)
[https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer](https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer)

~~~
girst
There is a proposal to add them to Unicode, but the process takes a while (and
its the third proposal since 2017):
[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18275r-terminals-prop-no-
at...](https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18275r-terminals-prop-no-
attachments.pdf)

~~~
dukoid
Looks great! Do you know why the other two have failed? I was initially
wondering whether it makes sense to bundle legacy and teletext all together
into one "big" proposal, but then I realized that there is a very high amount
of overlap...

~~~
girst
well, the three proposals are from the same group of people. they probably are
reactions to feedback from the unicode technical commitee[0]. I've looked into
the utc meeting notes, but those don't really contain much info[1].

[0]: see the progression at [https://www.unicode.org/cgi-
bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/18-275...](https://www.unicode.org/cgi-
bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/18-275R) and [https://www.unicode.org/cgi-
bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/18-235](https://www.unicode.org/cgi-
bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/18-235) and [https://www.unicode.org/cgi-
bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/17-435](https://www.unicode.org/cgi-
bin/GetMatchingDocs.pl?L2/17-435) [1]:
[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18007.htm](https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18007.htm)
and
[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18272.htm](https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18272.htm)
and
[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18115.htm](https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18115.htm)

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itukeitto
I also recommend checking out glyphdrawing.club for a contemporary web-based
editor using inventive unscii fonts. It features an original font and some
contributor-submitted ones! Really fun to play with.

[https://glyphdrawing.club](https://glyphdrawing.club)

[https://github.com/hlotvonen/glyph-drawing-
club](https://github.com/hlotvonen/glyph-drawing-club)

[https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/glyph-drawing-club-
edit...](https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/glyph-drawing-club-editing-tool-
heiki-lotvonen-ian-tuomi-digital-251018)

------
emersonrsantos
This is beautiful and heart-warming. Thank you.

I use for terminal the classic IBM mainframe 3270 font [1], but I can replace
that in a heartbeat with Unscii, which is more uniform and less OCR-y.

[1] [https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font)

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lubujackson
It's a little confusing, but my read is that this is a generalized set of old
font characters that were used for graphics (like code 437) plus a bunch of
unicode symbols that are also useful for graphics. With the idea being you
could make much more intricate art from this font set. I think the more
interesting idea would be to use it to encode movies similar to how ASCII
animations work - I wonder how compressed and good looking a movie might be
using this font?

~~~
Klover
Nice approach! Unless I missed something you’d still be having very few
colours, a limited resolution, comparatively poor performance to an OpenGL
rendered DRM output (as in, also a command line environment), and if you
simply use deflate or zstd for your compression you’ll have none of the
streaming benefits of h264 or newer. I like your idea though.

------
masswerk
As some kind of a parallel project, I once wrote a library for transforming
Unicode text to 8-bit character patterns. (The goal was a bit different, as it
was meant to render about any text which might be found to a canvas
implementing a 8-bit terminal emulation. The glyphs were mostly based on PET
character sets.)

[https://www.masswerk.at/char8/](https://www.masswerk.at/char8/)

Here's a rendering sample: [https://www.masswerk.at/char8/samples/char8js-
sample-green.h...](https://www.masswerk.at/char8/samples/char8js-sample-
green.html)

------
christianvozar
The ansi art scene is still kicking it.
[http://blocktronics.org](http://blocktronics.org)

~~~
sjs382
Also [https://artpacks.org](https://artpacks.org)

~~~
Domark
The BBS ANSI scene was fun, but then we moved to Photoshop. Now it’s fun to
work with Retina level graphics! And the tools now... I love Lightwave.

So it’s always been peculiar that some are attached to this particular style.
Then I noticed a bit of it is quite explicit or just nasty, and the art style
complements the restricted artistic method ANSI provides.

Also since I associate it with my youth, it just seems so immature. That’s
obviously my personal bias.

------
127
I did similar exploration of generating PETSCII from images recently on a
Jupyter notebook: [https://github.com/amb/Image-to-
PETSCII/blob/master/Picture%...](https://github.com/amb/Image-to-
PETSCII/blob/master/Picture%20to%20PETSCII.ipynb)

No colors though. Might have to continue the project as the colors look really
nice on the examples.

------
dancek
Wow, pelulamu.net still exists! I remember a friend talking about it about 20
years ago, i.e. when we were in school.

The font looks nice and is probably strictly an improvement over most terminal
fonts of the same size. I just wish they had a 24 or even 32px size for the
hidpi displays we have these days. I wonder if it's easy to run a linux
console font in double size.

~~~
Sharlin
> Wow, pelulamu.net still exists!

Yeah, it’s a site maintained by viznut, a well-known Finnish demoscene figure
and digital activist.

------
natmaka
Wondering how it may be used along with
[http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca](http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca)

------
Tempest1981
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13185932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13185932)

------
VadimPR
Oh cool! I'm a Mudlet dev
([https://github.com/Mudlet/Mudlet](https://github.com/Mudlet/Mudlet)) - the
font looks pretty nice. Not that many MUDs out there that make use of unicode
graphics though.

------
curlypaul924
Reminds me of:
[http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/index.html](http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/index.html)
though this one is based on Fixedsys instead of VGA.

I used VGA16 for years, until LCDs, subpixel rendering, and Unicode
programming fonts became ubiquitous.

------
mixmastamyk
> Mattel Aquarius:

Holy cow, thinking of George Plimpton and the computer I'll never have. This
person did their homework.

------
Annatar
z!OMG it supports Amiga ASCII and C= PETSCII!1!11!!, instead of being yet
another PC-tin-bucket-MS-DOS-only font.

Now we can enjoy all that wonderful Amiga Type ASCII art in front of Skid Row
cracked games!

 _Well done! Well done! (Loading Star Control.)_

~~~
Sharlin
The author, viznut, is an olskool demoscener and specifically interested in
extreme low-end and vintage computing.

------
fireattack
What does "Unicode" mean in "Unicode font"? From what I can see it only has a
handful (ascii?) characters.

Edit: after some testing it seems that "unscii-16-full" is the one (and only
one?) that supports some Chinese characters, but it's unusable because glyphs
stack on each other.. (screenshot:
[https://files.catbox.moe/262742.png](https://files.catbox.moe/262742.png) )

~~~
thristian
It means that it supports characters outside the basic 127 ASCII or 256
ISO-8859-1 characters, like the Box Drawing[1] and Block Elements[2]
characters defined in Unicode.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Drawing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Drawing)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Drawing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Drawing)

~~~
yesenadam
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements)

------
kyberias
It's a bit unclear why this exists. It seems to combine glyphs from 8-bit
computers and place them in Unicode space even though the standard doesn't
define many of them.

I guess the reason is to be able to combine them in some "art".

Perhaps those missing code points could be added by the Consortium based on
this feedback.

~~~
Annatar
If the terms "PETSCII", "Amiga ASCII" and "ANSI art" do not mean anything to
you, then this font and what can be rendered with it will be completely
meaningless to you and you will be confused like you are. You had to have
experienced it to appreciate it, which you do not apoear to have. A shame,
really, since you missed out on a lot of cool art.

~~~
diaz
I think for many people this here doesn't mean anything. I'm having a really
hard time understanding what is going on in the comments and on the post
itself and I've just settled with "it's something about ascii art on
terminals" and that's it. Probably has uses. But don't dismiss the confusion
on lots of people since this appears to be target at older folks.

~~~
Annatar
One can render ASCII art or even "poor man's graphics" in any text editor
regardless of their age. Yes it's dated, but if one is working anywhere near
physical equipmet like terminal concentrators hooked up to servers' serial
ports, one quickly learns to appreciate graphic approximations of windows with
just ASCII characters.

The rest like Amiga ASCII art from Skid Row and PaRaDoX and the like... you
missed out. It was a glorious childhood. It's hard to relate just how great it
was owning a Commodore Amiga computer. The ASCII art in front of cracked games
from the group who cracked them belong with that experience, and back in the
day, it was mind-blowing. This font is a modern implementation of characters
enabling that kind of art again, on modern systems, in programs like
OpenOffice for example.

And the target is the cracking / demo scene, irrespective of age.

~~~
kyberias
I have an Amiga and C64, so I'm very familiar with the art form. Again, I
don't understand the value of combining them in one font. I can understand
implementing each of the respective fonts as modern fonts, but not this.

~~~
Annatar
With this font, you can use say OpenOffice to create the same kind of art
while not needing the original systems and tools.

