Comment by thech6newshound

Quite amazing breakdown, thank you!

I'm hoping people who harness ASCII for stuff like this consider using Code Page 437, or similar. Extended ASCII sets comprising Foreign Chars are for staid business machines, and sort of familiar but out of place accented chars have a bit of a distracting quality.

437 and so on taps the nostalgia for BBS Art, DOS, TUIs scene NFOs, 8 bit micros.... Everything pre Code Page 1252, in other words. Whilst it was a pragmatic decision for MS, it's also true that marketing needs demanded all text interfaces disappeared because they looked old. Text graphics, doubly so. That design space was now reserved for functional icons. A bit of creativity went from (home) computing right there and then. Stuffing it all into a separate font ensured it died.

But, that stuff is genuinely cool to a lot of people in a way VIM, (for example) has never been and nor will it ever. This is a case of Form Over Function. Foreign chars are not as friendly or fun as hearts, building blocks, smileys, musical notes, etc.