The new additions mentioned are mostly to be found in the new Symbols for Legacy Computing block (PDF link) covering the 1FB00–1FBFF codepoint range. This block includes:
- a large number of
BLOCK SEXTANT
characters like 🬥 BLOCK SEXTANT-1236
("The term 'sextant' refers to block mosaics divided into six parts." Also note because these definitions are new, these and the following sample characters therefore probably won't render on most machines yet.)
- a large number of partially, diagonally covered block characters e.g. 🭔
UPPER RIGHT BLOCK DIAGONAL UPPER MIDDLE LEFT TO LOWER CENTRE
- various shading/fill symbols like 🮒
UPPER HALF INVERSE MEDIUM SHADE AND LOWER HALF BLOCK
and 🮖 INVERSE CHECKER BOARD FILL
and 🮟 LOWER LEFT TRIANGULAR MEDIUM SHADE
and others
- "character cell diagonals" from 🮠
BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL UPPER CENTRE TO MIDDLE LEFT
to 🮮 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL DIAMOND
- miscellaneous other "terminal graphic characters" like 🮲
LEFT HALF RUNNING MAN
or 🯊 WHITE UP-POINTING CHEVRON
or 🮛 LEFT AND RIGHT TRIANGULAR HALF BLOCK
- ten "segmented digits" characters from 🯰 (
SEGMENTED DIGIT ZERO
) to 🯹 (SEGMENTED DIGIT NINE
)
Two other retro-related symbols were added to a different, pre-existing "Supplemental Arrows-C" block:
- 🢰
U+1F8B0 ARROW POINTING UPWARDS THEN NORTH WEST
- 🢱
U+1F8B1 ARROW POINTING RIGHTWARDS THEN CURVING SOUTH WEST
The proposal for these characters (PDF) recounts that:
A list discussion in April 2017 concerning the “PETSCII” character set, used in various forms by
Commodore home computers ranging from the PET (1977) to the C128 (1985), led to the formation
of an ad-hoc Terminals Working Group, which is responsible for this document.
The following machines were considered, as well as the Teletext and Minitel services:
- Amstrad CPC (464, 664, 6128, etc.)
- Apple 8-bit computers (II, II Plus, IIe, IIc, III, and the 16-bit IIGS), including MouseText
- Atari 8-bit computers (400, 800, XL, XE) (“ATASCII”)
- Atari 16-bit computers (ST, STE, TT, Falcon), including the GEM windowing system
- Commodore 8-bit computers (PET, VIC-20, 64, 128) (“PETSCII”)
- Commodore Amiga (500, 1000, etc.)
- Mattel Aquarius
- MSX computers (Spectravideo SV-328, Yamaha YIS503II, Canon V-20, etc.)
- Oric computer series (Tangerine Computer Systems)
- RISC OS computers (Acorn, other ARM machines)
- Sinclair 8-bit computers (ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum, and Timex Sinclair equivalents)
- Tandy TRS-80 computers (TRS-80 Model I, Model III, Model 4, Color Computer)
- Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
(List taken directly from the proposal notes.)
There is some other interesting background in that L2/19-025 proposal document explaining various symbols that were considered but ultimately omitted from the specification.