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DEC line drawing character set

Category: charsets · Baseline: core · Tags: VT100 · Specification ↗

The DEC Special Graphics character set (activated via ESC ( 0) maps ASCII characters to box-drawing glyphs. Key mappings: j=\u2518 (bottom-right corner), k=\u2510 (top-right corner), l=\u250C (top-left corner), m=\u2514 (bottom-left corner), q=\u2500 (horizontal line), x=\u2502 (vertical line). These six characters form the basis for drawing boxes and borders in non-Unicode environments. Legacy applications like dialog, mc, and ncurses-based programs rely on this mapping.
How this is testedautomated
Send \x1b(0jklmqx\x1b(B, verify all six characters rendered as box-drawing glyphs (none are the literal ASCII characters j, k, l, m, q, x).

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by all 12 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Core TUI baseline.

Supported by 13 of 14 backends (93%)

Terminal Applications

TerminalVersionSupportNotes
iTerm23.6.9✓ yes
Ghostty1.3.1✓ yes
VS Code✓ yes
Warp✓ yes
Cursor✓ yes
Terminal.app✓ yes

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a means the parser accepts the sequence.

BackendVersionSupportNotes
Alacritty0.26.0✓ yes
Kitty0.40.0✓ yes
vt100.js0.2.1✓ yes
vterm0.2.0✓ yes
WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5✓ yes
xterm.js5.5.0✓ yes