tables with Unicode box drawing characters?

[Suraj Kurapati]

Hello,

I read David Wheeler's table proposal[1] for Markdown and very much
agree with his conclusion and PostgreSQL-inspired proposed format.  I
also read the mailing list archives for 2009 but did not find any
clear concesus on whether DW's format was officially accepted (I hope
it is soon!).

However, I want to ask: has anyone considered taking these simple
ASCII table drawings to the next level of realism with Unicode box
drawing characters[2]?  I have long admired the w3m browser[3]'s
ability to render HTML tables using Unicode box drawing characters.
For example, w3m renders this[4] demo page as follows[5]:

                     A more complex table-within-a table.
               An inner table showing a variety of headings and data items.
            ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
            │                          Inner Table                           │
            ├───────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┤
            │                   │                   Head1                    │
            │      CORNER       ├────────────────────────────┬───────────────┤
            │                   │                            │     Head3     │
            ├───────────┬───────┤           Head2            ├──────┬────────┤
            │   Head4   │ Head5 │                            │Head6 │        │
   Outer    ├───────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────┼──────┴────────┤
   Table    │A          │       │  • Lists can be table data │   Two Wide    │
            │           │       │  • Images can be table data│               │
            ├───────────┤       ├────────────────────────────┼──────┬────────┤
            │           │Two    │A Form in a table: Your age:│      │        │
            │           │Tall   │            [  ]            │  No  │Multiple│
            │HTML       │       │ What is your favorite ice  │border│line    │
            │Station    │       │           cream?           │Little│item    │
            │           │       │    [Chocolate         ]    │Table │        │
            │           │       │       [OK] [Cancel]        │      │        │
            └───────────┴───────┴────────────────────────────┴──────┴────────┘


What if Markdown used Unicode characters to express tables in this manner?

All we need are two essential subsets of the Unicode box drawing characters:
* thin ones for normal cells: ┌ ┐ └ ┘ ─ │
* thick ones for heading cells: ╔ ╗ ╚ ╝ ═ ║

Thanks for your consideration.

[1]: http://justatheory.com/computers/markup/markdown-table-rfc.html
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_drawing_characters
[3]: http://w3m.sourceforge.net/
[4]: http://www.december.com/html/demo/table.html
[5]: http://snk.tuxfamily.org/tmp/w3m-tables.png