Re: New Version released - TONS of suggestions

> - new professional ascii art line styles:
>
> 1) Veronica:
>   |  |   |   |     /      /
>   |  |   |   /    /     .'     .'
>   |  |   /  |    /     /     .'
>   |  |  |   /   /    .'    .'         .-'
>   |  |  |  |   /    /    .'        .-'
>   |  /  /  /  /   .'   .'       .-'
>   | |  |  |  /   /   .'      .-'     _.-'
>   | |  |  / /  .'  .'     .-'    _.-'
>   | |  / | /  /  .'    .-'   _.-'
>   | | |  /  .' .'   .-'  _.-'
>   | | | |  / .'  .-' _.-'
>   | / / /.'.' .-'_.-'____......------''''
>
> 2) Glory:
>   :  :   :   :     ;      ;
>   :  :   :   ;    ;     ,'     ,'
>   :  :   ;  :    ;     ;     ,'
>   :  :  :   ;   ;    ,'    ,'         ,-'
>   :  :  :  :   ;    ;    ,'        ,-'
>   :  ;  ;  ;  ;   ,'   ,'       ,-'
>   : :  :  :  ;   ;   ,'      ,-'     ,-~'
>   : :  :  ; ;  ,'  ,'     ,-'    ,-~'
>   : :  ; : ;  ;  ,'    ,-'   ,-~'
>   : : :  ;  ,' ,'   ,-'  ,-~'
>   : : : :  ; ,'  ,-' ,-~'
>   : ; ; ;,',' ,-',-~',,,,------~~~~~~''''
>
> 3) Segerman JFL:
>   L   L   L  |  J   J   J     /      /
>   J   |   L  |  J   |   F    /     .'     .'
>    L  J   |  |  |   F  J    /     /     .'
>    J   L  |  |  |  J   F   /    .'    .'         .-'
>     L  |  J  |  F  |  J   /    /    .'        .-'
>     J  J  J  |  F  F  F  /   .'   .'       .-'
>      L  L  L | J  J  J  /   /   .'      .-'     _.-'
>      J  |  L | J  |  F /  .'  .'     .-'    _.-'
>       L J  | | |  F J /  /  .'    .-'   _.-'
>       J  L | | | J  F  .' .'   .-'  _.-'
>        L | J | F | J  / .'  .-' _.-'
>        J J J | F F F.'.' .-'_.-'____......------''''
> - bug fixes

Hmmm .. this needs something.
MY style !

I'll go clean up my shapes and lines diagram to make it more apealing to the
public .. some very good stuff in it - I use it constantly.

Meanwhile .. You can only use theese in the line tool not with free draw or
arrow or shape.
And the shape tool needs improvement .. thoose circles are not really round.

Also .. consider putting dialog boxes under shapes as they are basicly
different styles of boxes.
Something like Arrows are basicly lines with an added arrow.
Why not instead have freehand , line and shape drawmodes and make the
arrow(heading of dialog box in case of shape drawing) an option to theese
modes (with choice of different types of modes).
This also makes the arrow available to freehand drawing (The direction the
line was going at the very end determines the direction of the arrow).

Fill mode desperatly needs options to fill with other characters than X .. the
best would be patterns like .. err .. that other big ascii editor .. which
name seems to escape me right now.
And shading would be nice too .. you choose a start "color" and an end "color"
and the direction to draw the shade in -- I'm thinking like Deluxe Paint use
to do it ( i believe you can still find version 2 for the PC somewhere ..
ofcourse if you have version 3 or 4 for amiga that's perfect.


It would also be a good thing if you could draw a line/shape/whatever and have
the text tool use the line/shape as a path for typing text.

An example from my shape and styles file :

[Sentence drawing] - ( Drawing with characters aligned so they actually spell
something! )

            ught i
          ca       n
        m            a
       '      ...     t
      I      .   .     i
             !         m
      !       !       e
       p       !pool
        l
         e
          H

Other notes :

Move all tools that draw some to the left toolbar and the rest to the top
toolbar.
This IMO makes more sense when they are grouped after function.

Fx "textbox" i think should be moved next to "text"

Figlet , image 2 ascii and makro are already grouped and so they should be.
BTW I suggest renaming makro to clipart which is a more used and known term
and besides "makro" is german (and danish btw) spelling .. not english - thats
Macro .. But as I said - Clipart makes more sense to most people as most
people know what clipart is.


Figlet tool needs some form of overview to quickly see what fonts are the
best.
I suggest moving all dingbat fonts out of figlet and into clipart and group
the fonts after type.
They should probably be sorted after size mainly .. since most likely you know
what size letters you need for your image.
There is no need to view all the really huge ones when you need a max 4 line
font.
I suggest the following groups :

Small , medium , large/huge , 3D , Special (fx. decimal , hex , digital,
morse, katana .. etc)

Howabout a button that opens a scrollable textwindow with all the fonts in one
group spelling the words you choose.
An ability to bookmark your favourite fonts would be nice too.


Image to ascii.
I think better conversions could be achieved (with some images) if Jave had an
option to find edges (trace contours) in an image like many pixeldrawing
programs have.
When I convert an image I usually find edges or reduce the bitdepth (without
dithering) to simplify the image so a clean conversion becomes easier.

Also I would be nice to have some control over what character the converter
can use.
I usually prefer a very limited amount of characters for shading while the
typiccal converter uses the entire spectrum of character which can make a
converted image look messy.

I mainly use the round and more shape neutral characters for shading.
Characters like :

.:%oO8 seem the best , sS&@# also fair .. but LITVE .. etc are not good since
they aren't so round to the eye and are much more likely to be seen as detail
than shading.

The perfect converter should be able to distinquis (how do you spell that ?)
between what parts of an image was detail and lines and what parts were
shading.

It would also be nice if the converter could load bmp, jpg , gif and png -
Correctly !
( Jave refuses to load some bmp's while happily loads others .. this must be a
bug )
Also It would be nice if the load dialog could filter out all non-supported
filetypes (instead of just showing *.*).

And how about the "plasticbag technique" ? .. Showing an image in the
background of the editor (resizeable and moveable and more or less opague) to
serve as a guide for making the ascii-version by hand on top of the picture.

Alignment in the textbox dialog also does nothing since the box autosizes to
the text.
It would be better to have aligment as an option to the select tool so you
could select an area and f.x center the ascii inside the selection - Both
horizontally and vertically.

Now that we are at the selection tool .. congratulations on the mirror
function .. it's very good.


Interface-wise I would like to keyboard shurtcuts for most tools .. along with
keys that when held down temporarily change the tool or function to something
else

F.x if you were in text mode and typing away and then needed to move something
you could f.x hold down CTRL or whatever or (as long as it's a function key or
a combination of two function keys) and quickly select an area .. move it and
then release CTRL.

Preferably the keys should work as they normally do in drawing programs.
F.x "CTRL" & "+" or "CTRL" & "-" almost always zooms in and out in drawing
programs.
Or like SHIFT always forces a elipse to be perfectly round or a line to only
draw in major angles like : 0, 45 and 90 degrees .. (ofcourse with ascii I
think this should be the angles draw as certain styles)

Like angled lines theese by VK
>   |  |   |   |     /      /
>   |  |   |   /    /     .'     .'
>   |  |   /  |    /     /     .'
>   |  |  |   /   /    .'    .'         .-'
>   |  |  |  |   /    /    .'        .-'
>   |  /  /  /  /   .'   .'       .-'
>   | |  |  |  /   /   .'      .-'     _.-'
>   | |  |  / /  .'  .'     .-'    _.-'
>   | |  / | /  /  .'    .-'   _.-'
>   | | |  /  .' .'   .-'  _.-'            (maybe one more line here)
>   | | | |  / .'  .-' _.-'
>   | / / /.'.' .-'_.-'____......------''''

I also think a "Snap to grid" option would be nice so you could sure all your
lines started from f.x the center of a "cell" or on a grid line


It's getting late and I need to sleep so I will have stop writing soon
althought I could probably think of more .. and I didn't even get to clean up
my shapes and lines and post them.

Just a few more quick suggestions while I can remember them.
A brainstorm.

* an option to smooth out freehand curves by having the program try to do them
as splines or bezier curves

* This heart (found in Makro's) was originally done by me and some other
artist ( a female ).
We discussed this a while back - I found out to my surprise that I was not the
first to create this heart.
Can someone remember who first created it ?
 .-. .-.
(   `   )
 `.   .�
   `.�

I have several other nice hearts too.

* Better cicles (will post some tomorrow)
* Better boxes .. especially the rounded ones and dialog boxed ( will also
post some tomorrow )

OK an example :
This is a Jave rounded box
 _-------------_
/               \
|               |
\_             _/
  -------------

Theese are some CeeJay rounded boxes
,---------------.
|               |
|               |
`---------------'
  ,-------------.     _   _
 /               \   (#)-(#)
 | SPECIAL PRICE! )   `'.''
 \               / `-.o( )o
  `-------------'     `0-0'

(Cool.. disney toys are on sale this week.)

 .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
(  Kind         )
(     Regards   )
'._._._._._._._.'

 .---------------.
(   C e e J a y   )
 `---------------'

$ System is going down for maintenance

--
Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

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