Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Semi graphical characters


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   Redirected as per below. Useful material was merged over. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 13:55, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Semi graphical characters

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Original research on a made-up term. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:32, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 02:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Its not a made-up term, this terminology is often used in datasheets of CRT controllers, (and font ROM's for them) that include such characters. several examples can be found here:, it is also used in informal conversation about early computer graphics, although there seems to be no clear consensus on how to call it, some call them glyphs, but the term glyphs does not exclusively describe characters that can be used as building blocks to create larger graphical figures. semi graphical characters were included in several of the very first character generator ROMs that were on the market when ROMs with more than a dozen or so bytes were still very rare. Whether the article should be called "semi graphical characters", or "semigraphics" or something else doesn't matter, these character set extensions were very common in the beginning of the home computer age, before high resolution graphics became abundant, there should be some information about them in Wikipedia. Mahjongg (talk)
 * Note that we discuss not semi-graphical displays, but so named semi(hyphen)graphical characters, which are actually some glyphs or icons from a non-standard set. Characters are not glyphs, and both are distinct from (underlying) hardware technology, feel the difference. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:41, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge with Text semigraphics, which essentially addresses the same topic, to a single article Semigraphics, the common name. --Lambiam 08:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, as I mentioned in the Semi graphical characters article, block graphics are essentially also semi graphical characters, and most (if not all) sets of semigraphical characters also include block graphic characters (text semigraphics), as just another way to introduce some graphical possibility to a display that otherwise could only display text. So text semigraphics are a subset of semi graphical characters. If there is anything problematic with these articles it is in the difficulty in naming them. Many different ways were used to address these special characters. I'm unsure if there ever was an official name for them, but one point of reference is what hardware designers of the Video chips and character-set ROMs used to call them. One remark, its indeed "semigraphics", not "semi graphics", because the latter sounds like your are talking about a picture of a Semi-trailer truck, as I found out after googling for semigraphics and google asked if I meant "semi graphics" and returned with pictures of trucks. Also it could mean "a little bit explicit". One problem with calling semi graphical characters semigraphics though is that when you google for "semigraphics" you almost exclusively find they are talking about text semigraphics, not about graphical characters like ♥ or building block characters like triangles or circle segments.
 * Anyway I support the proposal. Mahjongg (talk) 12:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * … and it is originality of the article what is demonstrated by such Google searches. IT-men speak and write about semigraphically capable hardware and display modes, not about vaguely defined sets of unusual characters and nonstandard glyphs, which are in some cases uploadable, but in other are hardware-specific. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If there is "OR" here, its not on whether the subject exists, but what name (if at all) to give to it. The concept of special characters that could enhance otherwise pure text rendering video hardware existed, and because the concept needed a name to be able to talk about it, they did. Specifically the IT engineers who wrote early technical documents about it did. Proof of it can still be found in these documents, with which I was familiar. I was only googling for "semigraphics", to check the claim by Lambian that this was the "common term", of which I was unconvinced, and still am. The problem is that any article must have a name, so I had to choose one out of several options. If that is OR, so be it. Perhaps I should have named it "special characters in a font set that enhances the display logic to give users the impression it supports high-res graphics", or something like that. Merging the article is a way to avoid putting a specific name to "Semi graphical characters", so if you are arguing that I have been "inventing" that term, merging, and then avoiding putting a name to it is a good way to solve that.By the way, I was talking about video systems who relied on these characters, not on systems with reprogrammable font sets, which did not, but only came with default font sets which included these characters for legacy reasons. On the systems I was talking about semi graphical characters were so important that the keyboard keys of these systems were imprinted with them for ease of combining them to form a larger graphic.  Mahjongg (talk) 14:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not mentioned in the article, that the concept is restricted to modes relying on built-in fonts, not uploadable. And even it were, it would still be OR without appropriate sourcing. The basic problem is actually not a title, but a definition (definedness). I willingly accept such topic as built-in fonts in display devices, and would try to keep such article even despite poor sources and partial OR. It is not so important, but definitely a valid piece of the information technology. Or course, such article will mention various non-standard characters and custom glyphs, and sources present in "semi graphical characters" confirm existence and use of such. But attempts to define "semi(-)graphical characters" as a class of characters, independent of an implementation, will IMHO result in OR. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So actually what you are against is saying this and that idea was implemented (and improved upon) at different locations and by different people, but "attempts to define the occurrence of these ideas, and putting them in a named category" is OR. Well, I can see what you are doing, but guess what. Long before I started the article people also recognized these characters to be in a special class, and they talked about them, and called them "semi graphical characters", or sometimes "pseudo graphical characters" in computer magazines and such of the era. They even did so independent of the actual implementation, and said things like "the semi graphical character set of the PET is better than the one of the OSI Challenger". Mahjongg (talk) 18:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * merge / redirect to Text semigraphics which covers the topic already much better. No opinion whether that should be renamed.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 15:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, but the current Text semigraphics article is NOT about the same topic, only a related one. Text semigraphic characters, involve characters made up of a matrix of "pixels" (sometimes referred to as sixels), which then were used to create a crude (low resolution) All Points Addressable pixelmap. While Semi graphical characters are all such characters designed to give the display logic the appearance of having access to the possibility to change any pixel in the display to create a display that shows anything at all, instead of just text. Some later systems accomplish this by using programmable fonts, other by really having logic that allowed to set or reset (or change the color) of any individual pixel of the display, making this crude trick obsolete.
 * Video display systems that use Semi graphical characters operate in text mode but use characters designed so that they can be used to give the illusion of having a freedom of choice that isn't really supported by the hardware. For example they can be the circle segments and line segments that can be used to draw a box with rounded corners, while the system doesn't have the ability to support drawing lines, let alone curves, on screen. Many early simple video systems in early home computers used this trick, before hardware came along that made the trick unnecessary.
 * All the characters that made this possible are members of a class of characters known as Semi graphical characters. Obviously there was no consensus in the beginning on exactly what kind of characters could be used, but for example the developers of the PET were told that it would be nice to be able to support card games, so the developers added card symbols, and horizontal and vertical lines, and four kinds of quarter circles, to draw a "card" (rounded rectangle) with card symbols in them. Other designers borrowed ideas from earlier implementations, choosing well thought out characters, and dropping seldom used ones, to design a set of symbols that allowed as much variety and flexibility as possible, with as few extra characters as possible. Common characters were for example characters that filled a triangular area of the character matrix (often 8×8 pixels) for creating slanting angles. Sometimes they included characters they anticipated were needed for games, like a little stick man, a "tank", or a ball. Using special characters this way was an idea, that was used by different designers, at different companies, and they all gave their different twist to it, but after some time there was consensus to call these special characters pseudo or "semi" graphical characters, as can be seen when reading old magazine articles and datasheets of those days. Mahjongg (talk) 18:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

✅ I went ahead and incorporated the content of this article in a rewritten version of Text semigraphics. It remains to be seen whether that article should be reamed to Semigraphics, I am neutral on that, and I rewrote it so that it doesn't matter. Obviously this article can now be deleted. Mahjongg (talk) 22:33, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I propose to turn this article into a redirect. Mahjongg (talk) 09:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ I changed the page into a redirect, hopefully this closes this case. Mahjongg (talk) 09:19, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.