Re: About rendering ascii code in a .txt medium

Martin Atkins wrote: 
> Not with ascii *code*, but with ascii *characters*, or more precisely a
> particular font's interpretation of what image goes with that ascii number
> code.

What I meant in the above context was that the ascii artist uses ascii code.

As far as rendering ascii art is concerned, it is not just the ascii
characters that determines the look of the artwork, but also font face, font
size, font color, background color, character spacing, line spacing, etc.

> I believe that those who want to view ascii art will have to put up with a
> fixed width font, and those that don`t care can keep their Arial or
> Helvetica or whatever.

Well, not quite, counter example is indeed aol and Arial. This amounts to
hardcoding the font, and as any other kind of hardcoding, it is inflexible.

However, fixed-width too is a kind of hardcoding, and its inflexibility is
becoming noticeable in a 20% proportional world.

Better is softcoding the fonts (and other typographical parameters) like in html.

> In Free Agent (which is what I am using) a simple right-click on the message
> and you can choose between Fixed-Width and Propertional fonts. This is no
> difficult task, and most other newsreaders can do the same.  Just because

The big issue here, is that people on the net generally do not know what is
going on if they see "garbage" let alone choosing a font by name!

Trying go give everyone on the net instructions is a heroic endeavour, but in
the long run a more systemic approach is needed, like protecting ascii pics
with typographical tags.

> one or two mail/news clients choose to use proportional fonts, that does not
> mean that the older clients are now out of date and invalid.  Many operating
> systems are still running on text-based screens and so they have a
> fixed-width font *only*. Just because Microshite made a mail client that
> thinks it knows everything about how people want their messages displayed,
> and assumes that that single-space at the start of the line was an accident,

Presently, txt rendering of ascii art gets things right 80% of the time which
is not bad (and which is the reason why we are still using it) but things are
(slowly) getting worse. 

The 20% damage is mostly due to proportional font. However, the deeper reason
for that, is that email and newsgroup software are evolving from "simple
built-in text editors" to "no longer simple built-in word processors."

It is these "no longer simple built-in word processors" which have features
that damage ascii art in a variety of ways, and the most damaging feature
happens to be proportional font. But there are other damaging features as
well, such as the "one space swallowing" feature by Outlook Express for
Windows. More damaging features are sure to come with the increasing
sophistication of the "no longer simple built-in word processors."

There are of course precautions that one can take to circumvent those damaging
features. I myself have written several pertinent articles on taking
precautions and I practice what I preach in ascii art posting to this
newsgroup. Nevertheless, these precautions are band-aids that will (slowly)
lose their effectiveness with the proliferation of damaging features to come. 

The main reason for the loss of effectiveness is that different email and
newsgroup software will not only require different precautions (there is no
standard to follow) but that different email and newsgroup software will
require contradictory precautions, making it impossible to formulate a generic
set of precautions that will work with all email and newsgroup software.

It is really recognizing this mainstream trend on "no longer simple built-in
word processors" (and not just the proportional font issue only) that
convinced me that in due time, we need to protect ascii pics with display
instructions (perhaps typographical tags in a .html medium.) 

And that is not a band-aid! That is a systemic solution whose portability is
increasing and whose portability will surpass the decreasing portability of
txt rendering of ascii art, although that will take at least several years
from now on.

=========================================================
[]   .oo     Visit the Gallery of the 'steins!         []
[]  (  -)   http://www3.sympatico.ca/petecasso/        []
[]   " "   Frogstein, who has a point behind his eyes  []
=========================================================

Related ASCII art in the Gallery

Explore these categories from our collection of 11,000+ artworks:

   _______
  |.-----.|
  || jgs ||
  ||_   _||
  `--)-(--`
 __[=== o]___
|:::::::::::|\
`-=========-`() 

     ,sSSs
   ,SSSS_/ ,_
   sS/`))\//
  sS//|_(_/      _,
  SS\\\  `""-.-'` /
sSS` jgs-==-'`'-._\

 ___________
|  _______  |
| |       | |
| |       | |
| |       | |
| |_______| |
|___________|

//O\\

|\/\/\/|
|      |
|      |
| (o)(o)
C      _)
 | ,___|
 |   /
/____\

|HHHHH/"\"\HHHHHHH|
|HH`\|_.-)'|/'dP,H|
|Hb.`\\_/_//'.oddH|
|HHHb|`.\/\,'|HHHH|
|HHHHHb/\/\/|HHHHH|
|"""""""""""""""""|
| |"" /\ \  / |"" |
| |__/--\ \/  __| |

Make your own ASCII art

Turn images, text or 3D into ASCII, or draw your own – right in your browser.