Re: So, You Want To Make Text Art?

Przemyslaw Brojewski <bro...@kis.p.lodz.pl> wrote in message news:84tcrr$43s$1...@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl...

> This time you've gone a little bit to far.

Nah, I have been pretty careful and polite, not to go too far. As a pal
told me about this thread: "Gee, you sure argue nicer than I would.
You are a saint, you know."



>I prefer to be fucked by a person of my choice, thank you.

That was what is commonly known as an insult, not an offer. I'm sure
you were quite flattered by it, but maybe you ought to brush up on
colloquial American English, before getting too excited.



>On the other hand, you don't think.
> It's high time you started thinking, boy. Or in other words:
> think what you write, not the other way round.

Good advice, here. You are absolutely correct, in many
respects. Thanks.



> Now you've really pissed my off with an attitude like this. Yours "fuck'em"
> brought me here, And now it evolved to "it looks ok in my software,
> and if someone complains -- fuck'em". Let's see how many people in this
> newsgroup you fuck.
>
> I had a look at 118 articles posted to this group.
> The oldest was dated      30 Dec 1999 22:19:39 +0000
> and the latest was from   04 Jan 2000 15:24:06 GMT
> no more articles were available on the newsserver I use.
> The articles were posted by 40 distinct people.
> Here's the boring chart how many of them used what software:
>
>      12 Microsoft Outlook Express
>      11 Mozilla
>       5 Forte Free Agent
>       4 Forte Agent
>       2 tin
>       1 postit.pl
>       1 fart
>       1 Turnpike
>       1 Supernews
>       1 MicroPlanet Gravity
>       1 MT-NewsWatcher
>       1 Deja.com
>
> thiese figures add up to 41 because some of them use more than one
> software package to read and post news.
> 12 people is indeed the largest group of useres in this newsgroup,
> but it's less then one-third of those who actively post. It's about
> 29%. I wouldn't call it 95% 90% 88% or whatever you might come up with.
> I wouldn't call it "most all". It's not any kind of "most". The thruth is,
> boy, that most people here use something other than "the dreaded OE5".
> some news servers wrap posts wider than 80 characters, because of
> historically evolved kind of standard. You probably know this, but don't
> give a shit. Anyway I drifted off the point.
> The point is that writing any post with lines longer than 80 characters
> minus some space for quoting is against netiqette. But you did not
> read netiquette. It is, after all, a kind of boring FAQ, and you don't
> read boring FAQs. And even if you have read them, you act against them.
> And if you like so much "Paradise Lost" than stop making guestimates,
> you're not good enough at it.
>
>
> brojek.

Checking posts is a poor method, for investigating this newsgroup's
"readership". This little newsgroup is actually quite well read.
Most of the "readers" do not post, however. Most of them just read
aaa, to see ascii pictures. Only a few make requests, even. The only
way to learn about this, is to get a lot of email from them. I suggest
you read my tutorials, and start posting a lot of ascii. People will
eventually start to email you, and you can ask them what newsreader
they are using, and discover what the real stats are like. That's
about the only real way you are going to get any good stats on what
they are using to read aaa with. Researching Dejanoose is not going
to yield those answers, although I commend you for trying.

The majority of folks I hear from, use OutlookExpress, and/or FreeAgent.
I believe most readers use OE 5, both from the number of people who
have mentioned this to me, and the fact that (like it or not), most
people run a Windows-based OS, and use Internet Explorer. OE comes
as part of that package.

This being an "art" newsgroup; no, I don't give a shit about what
may wrap a little. Sometimes pictures are larger than 80 characters.
Generally not, but they do come out that way, on occasion. As I said,
if the occasional post does wrap for someone, then they may skip it
over, edit it themselves, or email me for a copy of it in some other
format that doesn't wrap. I have sent a few .txt files to folks, for
that purpose, and can only remember two occasions when someone told
me a pix wrapped. I emailed it to them, both times, and they were
happy.

Actually, it's a rat's ankle deal that I can't manage to post anything
wider than 132 characters; I would prefer more like 250. Not often,
but sometimes. I did a "poster" size ascii, several months ago. Old
solid-style junk. I gave up on it, half finished. There wasn't much
I could do with the thing, you see. I certainly couldn't post it,
on usenet, except in some .gif-coverted form.

As to "netiqette"; forget that. It sucks. "Ettiquete" is much better.
In either event, yours suffers somewhat, but understanably so. You're
probably 15, and you just want to participate.

Do you need assistance, with ascii and your Swedish keyboard? Ilmari
Karonen just posted this:

 !"#$%&'()*+,-./  You shouldn't use any foreign characters in your
0123456789:;<=>?  art, only those in the chart on the left. If you
@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO  have an ordinary American keyboard, there should
PQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_  be no others visible on the keys, so you have no
`abcdefghijklmno  need to worry. However, if your keyboard has any
pqrstuvwxyz{|}~   other characters be careful not to use them.


Here's a shorter version, by Jan-Erik Finnberg:

Please use only the letters A-Z, in small or
capital case, numbers 0-9 and the following
characters when creating ASCII-art:

 ! " # $ % & ' (
 ) * + , - . / :
 ; < = > ? @ [ \
 ] ^ _ ` { | } ~

    I added the line about "case", just in case someone noticed
that, and decided to flame him for it.

    Or, there is Lizard's clever chart, which lets you know if
you are using a mono-spaced font, and shows you all the right
characters to use, at the same time. It is also quite sweet,
since she took Veronika's "warning" out of it :

       ======================================
       }       ASCII Character Chart        {
       ======================================
       }| This chart should be symmetrical.|{
       }|  If it isn't, change your font   |{
       }| til the i's and the m's line up. |{
       }|                                  |{
       }| iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii |{
       }| mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |{
       }|                                  |{
       }|  SP   !   "   #   $   %   &   '  |{
       }|   (   )   *   +   ,   -   .   /  |{
       }|   0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7  |{
       }|   8   9   :   ;   <   =   >   ?  |{
       }|   @   A   B   C   D   E   F   G  |{
       }|   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O  |{
       }|   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W  |{
       }|   X   Y   Z   [   \   ]   ^   _  |{
       }|   `   a   b   c   d   e   f   g  |{
       }|   h   i   j   k   l   m   n   o  |{
       }|   p   q   r   s   t   u   v   w  |{
       }|   x   y   z   {   |   }   ~      |{
       }|                                  |{
       }|      SP stands for Space bar     |{
       }|                                  |{
       }|    No, no, no, you MUSTN'T use   |{
       }|  ones that are not on the chart  |{
       }|   if you are going to post your  |{
       }|        creations in the          |{
       }|     newsgroup alt.ascii-art!     |{
       }|                                  |{
       ======================================


    I doubt you really need this information, but I'm giving
it to you, just in case. I don't blame you for wanting to jump
in - this is the only argument going. The real point here, though,
is not about foriegn language keyboards, or really about my choice
to deliberately leave out an ascii chart. It's really about being
polite to people; showing a little "ettiquete". Veronica has none.
I don't read or try to annoy or embarrass her on her threads; she
waits for an opportunity to do this to everyone who posts to AAA,
new and old alike.

    Thanks for the advice on thinking. I'm sure if I had been, I
would have ignored Veronica, in the first place.

Be good,
  JRO
oglesbee@
     mail.fullnet.net