Re: The earliest ascci-art......

I actually did know that these programs existed, but just never thought
of using them before. *S* Doing the Dolphin was a little tedious, but
worth it's end result. Thanks for the info and the ideas.

I suppose there is no difference between the typography (the shaped
poems, thank you Joan for reminding me of their correct name, I was
going crazy trying to remember) and the solid style of ascii-art, as far
as ascii-art is concerned, anyway. Just another thought

 
Peace,

Donovan



Pete Casso wrote:
 
:> Perhaps I should mention that there are software packages that lets
you
:> fill templates with text. The most common shapes for the templates
are
:> rectangles and ovals, and any text copied in those templates will
:> automatically fill those shapes in the smoothest way. For example,
:> PowerPoint, an application in MS Office, comes with predefined forms
of
:> templates, including stars, broad arrows in a variety of shapes, etc
:> (Although PowerPoint works well only with rectangles and ovals, the
:> other predefined shapes don't work very well.)
 
:> More sophisticated software packages such as PageMaker allows you to
:> define the shape of the templates to be anything you like, including
:> dolphins and swans, etc. This is very convenient, since you can
easily
:> scale the size (height and width) of the template such that the last
:> letter of the poem ends up exactly at the last letter position in the
:> template.
 
:> If you dispense with the idea of connecting poems with ascii art and
are
:> only interested in the visual/ascii art aspect, then there is an
:> interesting possibility for computer generated ascii art.
 
:> (I know, people posting articles on computer generated ascii art were
:> flamed recently  ;-))  but I will post this article anyway, and make
:> sure that the flaming experience will be as distasteful as possible
for
:> the perpetrators  ;-))
 
:> Anyway, rather than trying to write a piece of software for
generating
:> ascii art from scratch, you can consider writing plug-ins for the
most
:> common software packages in existence (it does not have to be the
:> extremely expensive PageMaker.) If you target the solid style of
ascii
:> art, then one of the things that the plug-in must do, is to introduce
a
:> grayscale, i.e. a substitution algorithm for light to dark, e.g. from
a
:> "blank" to a "@". If you target the line style of ascii art, then the
:> plug-in must include an outline algorithm for best fit, etc.
 
:> Of course, you can let the sofware do a mix of both algorithms, and
nice
:> would be slider that would let you change the mix from solid style
only
:> to 50%-50% to line style only with continuous intermediate positions
for
:> the best visual effect, and then start the diddling as necessary.
 
:> The advantage of writing a plug-in rather than writing an application
:> from scratch is as always the ability to piggy-back on the services
of
:> the host application which can be as tremendously sophisticated as
those
:> of PageMaker.


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