Gwyneth Paltrow - Jave image->ascii conversion .. and discussion of algorithms

I was just trying out Jave's imageconversion on one of the images I submitted to the
contest.
Here is Gwyneth Paltrow with a very simple set of characters making the shades.
Very stylish.


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            .:88888888888O::..         :O8
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Markus how about being able to define your characterset yourself ?
And how does it choose the right char for a particular area ?

I can see a few different paths to achive a good conversion

1 : simply doing a assesment of the chars and assigning them a shade of grey
on which it bases it's decision on what char to render in that area

2 : Rendering the chars to tiny images and choosing the char
based on fuzzy logic comparisson betwen the rendered image of the char
and the area in which the char should be.

3: Do something in between where each char is asssigned a shade of grey AND
 some info on what areas of the "cell" it fills.

F.x a "L" could be defined as a shade 40 (0-255 with 255 as complete black)
and fill 3 corners of the cell.

 _______
|   |   |
| # |   |
| # |   |
|-#-+---|
| # |   |
| ##|## |
|___|___|

Here the L fills the top-left, bottom-left and the bottom-right corner.

Or perhaps even more detailed .
The L fills 20% top-left , 20% bottom-left and 12% bottom-right


Any more ideas on useful methods .. either thought up ones or actual methods in use by
some program.

I know most programs just assign a shade of grey to a char and put one pixel = one
char..
Which as you know don't work .. because a char is much bigger than a pixel and it's not
equally tall as it is wide.

Kind Regards
CeeJay