Plaintext is beautiful!
=======================

(I hope you use utf-8..)

If you read this, you must know it better than anyone else!
But plaintext can be cumbersome sometimes, particularly if you want to go down
the visual side of presentations. For example, graphics.

A totally random expectation by me ended up with the following results:

    people (%)
      ▲
      │
  100 ┼
      │ ┃┃  ┃┃  
      │ ┃┃  ┃┃  
      │ ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  
   50 ┼ ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  
      │ ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃      ┃┃
      │ ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃   
      │ ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  ┃┃  
     ─┼─┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸──┸┸─▶ time (years)
       1970                    2000

I don't know why people seems to be afraid by plain text. You can actually make
pretty nice graphics and schemas with it! The important point is to know _HOW_.

What this has to do with vim you might ask? Well, vim has this pretty neat
builtin character table that can be called via `:digraphs`. Try it. Now. NOOOOW!

The two characters on the left are the "shortkeys" you can use to trigger the
digraph. You need the "magic" key to trigger digraphs. By default, it's <C-k>.
So enter in insert mode, and press the following:

    We love plaintext <C-k>cH

Sure we do ! Most of the time, digraph sequences are "logical". Eg, this heart
progrably means something like "c"yrillic "H"eart, or something like that. The
best example I found to prove how logical they are come from making tables:

    ┌─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────────────┐
    │ digraph │ char #1 │ char #2 │     meaning     │
    ├─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────────────┤
    │   ┌     │    d    │    r    │  down - right   │
    │   ┬     │    h    │    d    │  horiz - right  │
    │   ┃     │    V    │    V    │  VERT - VERT    │
    │   ┚     │    l    │    U    │  left - UP      │
    │   ┿     │    H    │    v    │  HORIZ - vert   │
    └─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────────────┘

Digraphs can be used anywhere in vim, allowing cool stuff like :s/┬/┼/g to
convert a top "line" into a middle one!

You might also want to check spark[1]. A CLI tool to make single line graph
generator. I know that GNU plot[2] has a way to create plain text graphs too.
Never tried it though.

links:
[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/holman/spark/master/spark
[2] http://www.gnuplot.info/
:wq