Re: Work in progress: ASCII art FAQ 3.0.-1

.----- On Sun, 28 Mar 1999 04:46:34 +1200, Matthew Thomas posted:
|
|
|4. ... MIRRORS
|The mirror addresses a couple of paragraphs down from the start are
|currently marked in [brackets] with the current version numbers for
|their copies of the FAQ. This is partly a wake-up call to those of you
|who have out-of-date copies on their sites, and partly a way of setting
|up the definitive list of mirrors.
|
|The person responsible for each copy listed below should reply to this
|message before 15 April 1999, stating their intention to keep their copy
|up-to-date (or not), and which address it is; if not, I'll remove the
|address of their copy from the list of mirrors. (Reply in alt.ascii-art,
|not by e-mail please, it's cheaper for me and probably no different in
|cost for you.) Anyone else who wants to put up a mirror should let me
|know what its address is going to be in the same way.
|
|Mirrors registered in this way will be shown by a * next to the address
|in later postings of this message. This is the first posting of this
|message. If you replied to this message saying that you would put up a
|mirror copy, and the next posting does not show a * next to your
|address, then I have probably not seen your message -- try again by
|replying to the next message.
'----------------------------------
Weeeel... Can I suggest that you hold off on this Mirrors thing until the
fate is decided for the 'faqs on the web' site and the other documents
(which were supposedly going to be linked at appropriate places in this FAQ)
It was my understanding that there was to be a mailing list for the entire
faq hosting site (that's this FAQ document, and whichever other ones survive
our new quality-control guidelines, plus the index document and the mirrors
list.) See the thread 'FAQs: What to do?' which I started, for more info on
what it currently going on in this discussion.

.----------------------------------
|
|Author: Matthew Thomas (spiff @ 3dmail . com)
'----------------------------------  /|\
Hmmm! --------------------------------'
New address eh?

.----------------------------------
|
|Mirror copies are available at
|o   http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/faq.htm [2.0]
|o   http://artpacks.acid.org/faqs/faq-altasciiart.html [2.0]
|o   http://vibes.vossnet.co.uk/i/ighaig/ascfaq.htm [2.0]
|o   http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~freise/ascii/faq.html
|o   http://www.misslink.net/donovan/asciifaq.html [2.0.mga1]
|o   http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/8608/faq.html [1.0.3]
|o  
|http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/vk/pics/ascii/junkyard/techstuff/FAQ/FAQ_Matthew_Thomas.html [1.0.3].
'----------------------------------
As I said in my last message (I believe),
vibes.vossnet.co.uk/i/ighaig/ascfaq.htm has been superseded by the copy at
my 'all the faqs' site
http://voices.vossnet.co.uk/a/atkins/aaafaq/aaafaq.txt. (and the mirrors of
that)

VK... I think you really should find a way of shortening that URL... What
about http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/aaafaq/aaafaq.txt ? Much shorter and
managable. (Incidentally, Matthew, w.l.l.s/~vk/ is the same as /users/vk/
and is shorter!

.----------------------------------
|1.  What's going on here?
|--------------------------
|    You're probably reading this because it's been posted to
|    news:alt.ascii-art or news:alt.ascii-art.animation.  If you're not,
|    jump in and take a look. In these Usenet groups people discuss
|    ASCII art, request ASCII art, post ASCII art, post improved versions
|    or variations of other people's ASCII art, and generally have fun.
'----------------------------------
I like! Good, short, concise intro. Muy bien.

.----------------------------------
|2.  What is ASCII art?
|----------------------
|    I thought you'd never ask! ASCII art is any sort of picture or
|    diagram drawn with the printing characters in the ASCII character
|    set. (For more about ASCII, see Question 3.)
|    
|    Probably the most common ASCII art picture is the smiley -- :-) --
|    but it gets a lot more sophisticated than that. Here's a small ASCII
|    picture of a snow-scene paperweight, drawn by Joan Stark:
|               ____
|            .-" +' "-.
|           /.'.'A_'*`.\
|          |:.*'/\-\. ':|
|          |:.'.||"|.'*:|
|           \:~^~^~^~^:/
|            /`-....-'\
|       jgs /          \
|           `-.,____,.-'
|
|    If this picture looks very strange and you can't really tell what it
|    is, don't panic -- see Question 5.
|    
\
 > SNIP the rest
/
'-----------------------------
Much better. The 'I thought you'd never ask' is good... for one thing it
makes the FAQ seem more friendly.

.-----------------------------
|3.  What's ASCII, then?
|-----------------------
|    ASCII (short for the American Standard Code for Information
|    Interchange) is a basic set of 128 numbered symbols which almost all
|    kinds of computer can display. Here are the ones that are used for
|    ASCII art:
\
 > SNIP again
/
'---------------------------------
Good again, (although I don't know if this has changed or not) This gets the
message across in laymans terms.

.------------------------------    
|    
|4.  What *isn't* ASCII art?
|---------------------------
|
|    Sometimes people confuse ASCII art with other things, and posting
|    these other things to the ASCII art Usenet groups tends to annoy us.
|    The Rogue's Gallery is as follows.
|
'---------------------------

Also good.

.-----------------------------
|5.  How do I view ASCII art properly?
|-------------------------------------
|    [Merge with Martin's `ASCII art not looking right? Read this!']
'-----------------------------
Ahh yes, the merging has begun. :o)

.-----------------------------
|    [Include instructions for common e-mail programs/Usenet readers]
'-----------------------------
There's instructions for Outlook Express in 'All you need for ASCII Art:...'
and of course the registry patch. Both are on my FAQ site if you want to
look at them. (same addy as above, but without the aaafaq.txt)

.-----------------------------    
|    If a picture you see posted to one of the ASCII art Usenet groups
|    looks a complete mess to you, don't panic. There are several
|    reasons why it may look weird.
|
|    *   If *none* of the pictures in the group look like what the
|        sender describes them as, then  you're probably using a
|        proportional font. To view (and draw) ASCII art, you must use a
|        fixed-width font -- one where all characters are the same width
|        (like on an ordinary typewriter). If you're not sure if your
|        font is fixed-width or not, check the following two lines and
|        see if they're the same length.
|
|            iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
|            mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm|
|
|        If they aren't, find the option in your newsreader which lets
|        you specify which font to use. If you just have a choice
|        between proportional and fixed width, choose fixed width. If
\
 > SNIP
/
'---------------------------
This is basically what it says in my document, but mine goes into it a
little more, with examples.

.---------------------------
|6.  How do I draw my own ASCII art?
|-----------------------------------
|    [shouldn't have a tutorial here -- point to others instead]
|    [mention TheDraw (URL???) and Emacs' M-x picture-mode]
'---------------------------
About the tutorial... shall I have a bash at rehashing Daniel Au's tutorial,
bringing up to date anything that needs changing, etc?
TheDraw's URL is in the 'All you need for ASCII Art...' document.

.--------------------------------
|    You don't need a special program to draw ASCII art. It can be
|    drawn using any text editor, such as SimpleText or BBEdit in MacOS,
|    Notepad in Windows, nedit, vi, or pico in Unix, BEd or AZ in
|    AmigaOS, edit in DOS, or any of the various Emacs editors. You can
|    use a word processor to draw ASCII art, but remember: (1) use a
|    fixed-width font [see Question 4]; and (2) using any special
|    formatting (bold/italic/coloured etc) is a waste of time, as it
|    will be lost when you post the picture.
\
 > SNIP!
/
'--------------------------
The 'All you need for ASCII Art...' would be a good thing to link to here,
since it is a list of Monospaced fonts and text editors, with more examples
than are given here. Those people that can't get it set up from here can
then go and look at my document for more examples to help them along.

.--------------------------
|7.  So now I've drawn it, how should I post it?
|-----------------------------------------------
|    [subject line, Outlook Express bugs, instructions for common
|    Usenet readers]
|    [incorporate Colin's warning]
|    [link to Martin's patch for the Outlook Express 4 bug]
|    [what exactly is the situation with the OE 5 bugs???]
'--------------------------

<clarify>My patch does not fix the 'bug' in OE4, it merely sets it up to
post in Plain Text and use a monospaced font for reading and writing to
newsgroups. No bug-fix in it (yet).</clarify>
The OE5 'Bugs' are the same as the OE4 ones, but with more added - like the
'file://' whenever you have a '//' followed by a character. (I think)

Colin's warning about 'control codes' could do with some rehashing, since it
has a bit more than control codes in it after the second revision --- but
that's OK for this document as long as you don't refer to them as Control
Codes.

.------------------------------
|
|8.  I like that ASCII picture -- can I copy it for myself?
|----------------------------------------------------------
|    [incorporate Krogg's politeness levels]
|
|    Don't assume that if somebody posts something to a Usenet group,
|    that gives you the right to use it however you like; copyright
|    laws still apply. For more information, see the article `Copyright
|    Myths FAQ: 10 big myths about copyright explained' in
|    news:news.announce.newusers. (It is also available at
|    http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html.)
'-------------------------------------
I wrote this a few days ago...

        ,.   .---.  ,--. ,-_/ ,-_/        ,.       .               .
       / |   \___  | `-' '  | '  |       / |   ,-. |-    ,-. ,-. ,-|
      /~~|-.     \ |   . .^ | .^ |      /~~|-. |   |     ,-| | | | |
    ,'   `-' `---' `--'  `--' `--'    ,'   `-' '   `'    `-^ ' ' `-^
         ,--.                       .   .      ,
        | `-' ,-. ,-. . . ,-. . ,-. |-. |-     )   ,-. . , , ,-.
        |   . | | | | | | |   | | | | | |     /    ,-| |/|/  `-.
        `--'  `-' |-' `-| '   ' `-| ' ' `'    `--' `-^ ' '   `-'
                  |    /|        ,|
                  '   `-'        `'              By Martin Atkins


This document describes how copyright laws affect ASCII Art.

Facts about ASCII Art copyright:
* ASCII Art is copyrighted.
* Just because ASCII Art is posted to the Internet, doesn't make it
  public domain.
* Fair Use allows you to quote ascii pictures when replying to messages
  to comment on them.
* An ascii picture based on a logo, other ascii picture, photo, diagram
  etc is a copyright infringement, but that is rarely inforced.
* While ASCII Art has no commercial value, it is still a violation to
  distribute it without permission.

However, on alt.ascii-art these are usually the case:
* Most ascii artists don't mind you copying their art and distributing
  it, so long as the initials/name are left intact.
* Deriving your work from other pictures (diddling) is usually accepted
  gratefully.
* Creating ascii pictures from tv programs, logos, photos etc is
  usually ok by the copyright holders (but do check if in doubt!)

Notice the *usually* - Creators of pics are allowed to protect them and
the creators of things that you do an ascii picture of are perfectly
within their rights to sue you.
This document was written with the aid of the 'Copyright Myths FAQ: 10
big myths about copyright explained' which is at:
http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html

Perhaps there is some way this could be incorporated? (but in a more subtle
way!)


.---------------------------------
|9.  I want a picture of something -- how do I ask for one?
|----------------------------------------------------------
|     Yes, if we find it interesting. Give your request the subject
|     `REQ: xyz' if you're looking for a picture of an xyz, then in the
'---------------------------
Erk... that doesn't really make sense :o)

.--------------------------------
|10.  Can someone do me some cool lettering?
|-------------------------------------------
'--------------------------------
Better title... well done :o)

.----------------------------------
|11. How do I convert a picture to ASCII art?
|--------------------------------------------
|    There are computer programs available which convert graphics files
|    of a particular format (usually GIF) to ASCII art. They go by names
|    such as ascgif, gifa, gifscii, and gif2ascii. Do a Web search for
|    any of these programs to find places where you can download them.
|    Try:
|
|         gopher://twinbrook.cis.uab.edu/1A/atools.70
|         ftp://ftp.wwa.com/pub/Scarecrow/Gifscii/.
'-----------------------------
I think you should put something like 'The best results can be got by
loading up a text editor and producing a "conversion" yourself' or words to
that effect, to encorage people to have a go on their own first.

.-----------------------------
|
|12. Where do I find more ASCII art pictures and information?
|------------------------------------------------------------
|    There are three ASCII art Usenet groups. news:alt.ascii-art is
|    the main group, where most of the discussion takes place.
|
|    news:rec.arts.ascii is a `best-of' group, for posting the best
|    ASCII art from news:alt.ascii-art. It is a moderated group -- all
|    messages pass through an intermediary (the moderator) who checks
|    them for appropriateness before sending them to the group itself.
|    The advantage of this is that there isn't any unwanted advertising
|    in the group; however, the frequency of postings to
|    news:rec.arts.ascii is extremely low at the time of writing (it was
|
'-----------------------------------

I think that some of the documents that follow this should be rehashed and
put up with the other stuff on the 'alt.ascii-art FAQ site' mirrors. If we
can have one site (mirrored obv) with everything available on every mirror,
it will make it easier to write in the FAQ and for people to find.

*repeating example from the 'FAQs: What to do?' thread*

You can say at the top...

Throughout this document, other documents are reffered to without any urls.
They are all available from the following alt.ascii-art document site
mirrors:
http://voices.vossnet.co.uk/a/atkins/aaafaq/
http://website.lineone.net/~martin.atkins/aaafaq/
... etc

Just put the file name given below onto the end of these addresses to find
the referenced document.

and then in the appropriate section say 

'see aaahowtoanimate.txt for more information om creating ascii art
animations'

(or something like that)

My opinions...
-Martin
                  ______   ----.
                .'      '-'   (D'.    .---------------------------------.
              -"""""--.-'         '-. |         _______     |===========|
           .-'      -'  .'/         / ||\/| /\ |_)|  | |\ | |mart.atkins|
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   \_/ '..       |          .'.  '    |#####'_____________________'#####|
          '    '' '''"\----'   \  \__ '---------------------------------'
           '__________/  mga    '____\\

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