User-defined Characters
The border between text mode and graphical programs can sometimes be fuzzy, especially on the PC's VGA hardware, because many later text mode programs tried to push the model to the extreme by playing with the video controller. For example, they redefined the character set in order to create custom semi-graphical characters, or even created the appearance of a graphical mouse by redefining the appearance of the characters over which the mouse was shown at a given time.
Text mode rendering with user-defined characters has also been useful for 2D computer and video games because the game screen can be manipulated much faster than with pixel-oriented rendering.
Read more about this topic: Text Mode
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)