getting unicode lower block series to appear

Question

In contexts outside of LaTeX, I've found rectangles of increasing size very useful. I can enter these in UTF-8 in my text editor, but despite trying every font related fix I can find, I can't seem to get these glyphs to show up (I'm using xelatex). Can anyone provide a MWE in which these will appear?

• ' ' U+2002 En Space Nut
• '▁' U+2581 lower 1/8
• '▂' U+2582 lower 1/4
• '▃' U+2583 lower 3/8
• '▄' U+2584 lower 1/2
• '▅' U+2585 lower 5/8
• '▆' U+2586 lower 3/4
• '▇' U+2587 lower 7/8
• '█' U+2588 full block

I can get the ding symbols for horizontally increasing rectangles working ( \ding{120} ❘, \ding{121} ❙, and \ding{122} ❚ ), but I really want vertically increasing blocks.

Answer 1

Package pmboxdraw defines box drawing characters using rules:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pmboxdraw}
\begin{document}
\renewcommand*{\arraystretch}{1.2}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
  U+2581 & \pmboxdrawuni{2581} & \verb|\pmboxdrawuni{2581}|\\
  U+2582 & \pmboxdrawuni{2582} & \verb|\pmboxdrawuni{2582}|\\
  U+2583 & \pmboxdrawuni{2583} & \verb|\pmboxdrawuni{2583}|\\
  U+2584 & \textdnblock        & \verb|\textdnblock|\\
  U+2585 & \pmboxdrawuni{2585} & \verb|\pmboxdrawuni{2585}|\\
  U+2586 & \pmboxdrawuni{2586} & \verb|\pmboxdrawuni{2586}|\\
  U+2587 & \pmboxdrawuni{2587} & \verb|\pmboxdrawuni{2587}|\\
  U+2588 & \textblock          & \verb|\textblock|\\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Remarks:

• \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} is already supported by package pmboxdraw. Thus the symbols can be input as Unicode characters.

• With XeTeX (or LuaTeX), you can make the Unicode input characters active, e.g.:

  \catcode`\^^^^2581=\active
  \def^^^^2581{\pmboxdrawuni{2581}}