Can Île-de-France drop its circumflex under the 1990 reform?

No. The 1990 rectifications let the common noun île be written ile, but they don't touch proper nouns, which keep their official spelling. So it stays Île-de-France, Île de Ré and Îles de la Madeleine, with the Î in capitals as well, even in text that follows the new spelling everywhere else.

How do I pick ╬ and the other wall pieces automatically?

Give each wall cell a 4-bit mask from its neighbors (up 1, right 2, down 4, left 8) and use it as an index: `'═║═╚║║╔╠═╝═╩╗╣╦╬'[mask]`. A cell walled on all four sides has mask 15 and gets ╬, one with walls right and down gets ╔, and so on, so a grid of # cells turns into a joined double-line map in one pass.

ASCII 206

Uppercase I with circumflexDouble box cross junction

ASCII 206 is Î on Windows and ╬ in old DOS.

Î (Capital I with Circumflex) is byte 206 in Windows-1252, Unicode U+00CE. Romanian needs it at the start of any sentence beginning with În (in) or Între (between), and French writes it in Île-de-France. UTF-8 stores it as C3 8E, and 8E is Ž in Windows-1252, so mangled text reads ÃŽle-de-France. The HTML entity is Î.

╬ (Double Cross) is byte 206 in code page 437, the original IBM PC character set, and maps to Unicode U+256C. It's the junction where two double lines cross, the inner intersections of a table ruled entirely in ║ (186) and ═ (205). Where a double line crosses a single one, ╬ is the wrong piece. You need ╪ (216) for a single vertical through a double horizontal, or ╫ (215) for the reverse. Those are mixed pieces, and code page 850 replaced both with letters, so all-double grids survive a code page switch better. In UTF-8, ╬ is E2 95 AC, and the HTML entity is &boxVH;.

Latin LetterBox Drawing

Technical Details

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 206 is Î.
       Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */
    printf("\u00CE\n");   /* UTF-8: C3 8E */

    unsigned char b = 206;         /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */
    printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b);    /* 206 0xCE */
    return 0;
}

Code Example

</>

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    /* Byte 206 is ╬ only on a console using code page 437
       (chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the
       lone byte 0xCE is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */
    putchar(206);

    /* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xCE is -50.
       Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */
    char c = (char)206;
    unsigned char u = 206;
    printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u);   /* -50 206 */

    /* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */
    printf("\u256C\n");          /* E2 95 AC */
    return 0;
}

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 0206 on the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The leading zero picks the Windows code page. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 00CE and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Option+Shift+D.
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type ce, then Space. With a Compose key set up, press Compose, caret, I.
Phone: Tap Shift, then long-press I and pick Î.

How to Type It

Windows: Hold Alt and type 206 on the numeric keypad, with no leading zero. Windows reads it as a DOS code and inserts ╬. No numeric keypad? In Word, type 256C and press Alt+X.
Mac: Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for "box drawings double vertical and horizontal".
Linux: In GNOME, or any desktop running IBus, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 256c, then Space.
Phone: Phone keyboards have no key for it. Tap the character at the top of this page to copy it.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. The 1990 rectifications let the common noun île be written ile, but they don't touch proper nouns, which keep their official spelling. So it stays Île-de-France, Île de Ré and Îles de la Madeleine, with the Î in capitals as well, even in text that follows the new spelling everywhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Give each wall cell a 4-bit mask from its neighbors (up 1, right 2, down 4, left 8) and use it as an index: `'═║═╚║║╔╠═╝═╩╗╣╦╬'[mask]`. A cell walled on all four sides has mask 15 and gets ╬, one with walls right and down gets ╔, and so on, so a grid of # cells turns into a joined double-line map in one pass.

ASCII 206

Uppercase I with circumflexDouble box cross junction

ASCII 206 is Î on Windows and ╬ in old DOS.

Latin Letter

Box Drawing

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* On Windows (code page 1252) byte 206 is Î.

Modern terminals expect UTF-8, so print the code point, not the byte. */

printf("\u00CE\n"); /* UTF-8: C3 8E */

unsigned char b = 206; /* the raw Windows-1252 byte */

printf("%d 0x%02X\n", b, b); /* 206 0xCE */

return 0;

}

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {

/* Byte 206 is ╬ only on a console using code page 437

(chcp 437 on Windows, or DOSBox). On a UTF-8 terminal the

lone byte 0xCE is invalid and prints as garbage, often �. */

putchar(206);

/* char is signed on x86, so a plain char holding 0xCE is -50.

Use unsigned char when you compare or index by byte value. */

char c = (char)206;

unsigned char u = 206;

printf("\n%d %d\n", c, u); /* -50 206 */

/* Portable: print the Unicode character as UTF-8 instead. */

printf("\u256C\n"); /* E2 95 AC */

return 0;

}