Hi Thierry

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Thierry Banel <tbanelwebmin@free.fr> wrote:
> What about text-only plots in tables ?
> All in Emacs, without any external package.
>
> |  x | x^2 |              |
> |----+-----+--------------|
> |  0 |   0 |              |
> |  1 |   1 | .            |
> |  2 |   4 | :            |
> |  3 |   9 | u            |
> |  4 |  16 | W            |
> |  5 |  25 | Wu           |
> |  6 |  36 | WW:          |
> |  7 |  49 | WWH          |
> |  8 |  64 | WWWV         |
> |  9 |  81 | WWWWH        |
> | 10 | 100 | WWWWWW       |
> | 11 | 121 | WWWWWWW-     |
> | 12 | 144 | WWWWWWWWl    |
> | 13 | 169 | WWWWWWWWWW.  |
> | 14 | 196 | WWWWWWWWWWWV |
> #+TBLFM: $3='(orgtbl-ascii-draw $2 0 200)
>
> I wrote a package to draw such small-quick-and-text-only graphs.
> It is here: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/orgtbl-ascii-plot.html
> Just type C-c p
>
> Comments and enhancements are welcome!
> Have fun.

Your idea is very good. I suggest to have also a unicode variant using
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements
with (elt " ▏▎▍▌▋▊▉" [...]) to divide one char into eight widths which
I will use often for time series:

| year |  % | ascii    | unicode  |
|------+----+----------+----------|
| 2009 | 55 | WWWWWWl  | ▉▉▉▉▉▉▌  |
| 2010 | 54 | WWWWWWu  | ▉▉▉▉▉▉▍  |
| 2011 | 60 | WWWWWWW: | ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▏ |
| 2012 | 62 | WWWWWWW; | ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▍ |
#+TBLFM: $3 = '(orgtbl-ascii-draw $2 0 100) :: $4 = '(orgtbl-uc-draw $2 0 100)

Attached is a screenshot with DejaVu Sans Mono as an example of a font
that shows the same block height for all block widths (some other
fonts don't show the same block height for all block widths). Remember
"C-u C-x =" too see the name etc. of the char at point.

Michael