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Box-drawing characters
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{{Short description|Characters for drawing frames and boxes}} {{Hatnote|Several confusable characters redirect here. You may be looking for [[em dash]], [[vertical bar]], [[multiplication sign]], [[slash (punctuation)]] or [[backslash]].}} {{SpecialChars}} [[File:Midnight Commander screenshot.png|thumb|right|320px|[[Midnight Commander]] using box-drawing characters in a [[terminal emulator]]]] '''Box-drawing characters''', also known as '''line-drawing characters''', are a form of [[semigraphics]] widely used in [[text user interface]]s to draw various geometric frames and boxes. These characters are characterized 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 font]]s. In [[graphical user interface]]s, these characters are much less useful as it is simpler to draw lines and rectangles directly with graphical [[API]]s. However, they are still useful for [[command-line interface]]s and plaintext [[Comment (computer programming)|comments]] within [[source code]]. 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. 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 shadow]]s.
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