Re: About rendering ascii code in a .txt medium

> > Please provide a quote from the ascii standard prescribing this one medium, I
> > don't see it.
> 
> There is no text I can quote -

Therefore, the ascii standard does not prescribe any medium.

> The problem is, the GIF is not made with ASCII code.
> Once it is in the form of a GIF, it no longer uses ascii code.

Both printout and gif show ascii art. You conceded that printout show ascii
art, but you try to deny that the gif show ascii art by tossing up alleged
prescriptions on medium, typography, storage methods, viewing methods, code
retrieval methods, etc., all prescriptions that the ascii standard simply does
not have!

You have already failed to provide a quote from the ascii standard on a
prescription on medium. I think you will fail too in providing quotes on the
other alleged prescriptions. Then it is time to concede that the gif shows
ascii art as well, just like the printout.

If you disagree, please provide the pertinent quotes. You seem to toss up more
and more alleged prescriptions as the discussion goes on. In case you want to
add other alleged prescriptions, please provide the pertinent quote from the
ascii standard on the additional alleged prescription.

> It doesn't matter what the picture was originally created from (ASCII art, 

To me that's the decisive and ONLY criterion for ascii art. That is, if ascii
code is used, then that's ascii art. If ascii code is not used, then that's
not ascii art. 

> simple, common sense.  It's an unwritten rule that ASCII art is supposed to

I suggest you go by the ascii standard rather than by (your own) common sense
or unwritten rules.

> You wouldn't send an image of some kind (regardless of it's format) to a
> friend if you knew he couldn't display it, would you?  But you know that if
> it is ASCII (according to the criteria I mentioned), the receiver can easily
> view it no matter how little software they have.

There is about 80% easiness and declining. 

Try sending an ascii rose to your new found love at aol and she can't view it
correctly. That's 10% of the Internet. Another 10% comes from proportional
settings in the rest of the Internet.

> Exactly, as is the storage of an image as a GIF - it is outside the ASCII
> standard because the image is not stored as a stream of ASCII codes.  It is
> stored as a bitmap.

And the stored pic is ascii art, because it is made with ascii code. The ascii
standard does not prescribe any storage methods, .txt and .gif and myriads
more storage methods are perfectly legitimite.

If you disagree, please post a quote from the ascii standard prescribing
storage methods.

> > If you disagree, please post quotes from the ascii standard on prescribed
> > manipulation and code retrieval methods, I don't see them.

So, there are no prescriptions in the ascii standard on manipulation and code
retrieval methods.

> Like I said , they don't exist because this is an unwritten rule - an
> understood principle, upon which this newsgroup is based.

Again, please stick with the ascii standard, not by unwritten rules or
understood principles. And should you not have noticed, I have pointed at the
self-limiting views of this newsgroup as well ;-)

> > > The ASCII standard doesn't allow for anything except some simple formatting
> > > codes (like linefeed or horizontal tab).
> >
> > Please provide a quote from the ascii standard spelling out the prohibition, I
> > don't see it.
> 
> Sure, if you want me to type up a copy of an ASCII chart.  Here are the
> codes from 0 to 31, which define the ASCII control code set.  Note that
> using these codes is of course not allowed in this newsgroup.  From the
> manual to my Panasonic KX-P2123 printer (which has of course been retired):
> 
>  0 Null
<snip list>

You did not provide a quote on the prohibition, since the ascii standard
contains no such prohibition. What you provided is something else.

> I didn't say the ASCII standard PROHIBITS the use of these options, I only
> said it doesn't directly support them! This newsgroup, however, does
> prohibit the use of the various typographical settings we've discussed,
> because they just are not very portable.

Ah, indeed, the ascii standard does not prohibit any of these options, and
they are supported by myriads and myriads and myriads of resources in the real
world! 

And of course, this newsgroup currently sticks with non-proportional, because
it still provides a high portability of 80%. Compared to using html for
example, then the portability is only 20%. One point in this discussion is
that the 80% portability is coming down and the 20% portability is going up.
So some time in the future (at least a few years from now on) there will be a
cross-over point, and from then on html has the higher portability.

> If it doesn't match those criteria after rendering, the image is not ASCII
> art by definition (because it probably contains one or more codes to cause
> some display change, making it fail the above criteria)

Please provide a quote from the ascii standard spelling out those rendering
criteria, I don't see them.

> > Please provide a quote from the ascii standard stating the above viewing and
> > translation requirements, I don't see them.
> 
> Alright.  Please provide me a quote from the ASCII standard stating that the
> above requirements do not matter.

The burden of proof rests on you, not me. You alleged that the ascii standard
has viewing and translation requirements that are not there.

> > Please prohibit the naming our parallel newsgroup alt.ascii-art.animation
> > I think the name is justified, for the same reason as in the above.
> 
> Since I don't read that newsgroup, I can't suggest what criteria they
> follow.

Well, the point was that you said that Javascript animations were not ascii
art. However, that's exactly the topic of that newsgroup and it has
nevertheless the words ascii art in its name. I think that the name is
justified because ascii code is used to make those animations.

> > 20% of newsreaders are set to proportional, damaging ascii pics. It is
> > unrealistic to expect everyone of them to change to non-proportional,
> > and over and above that, the trend goes the other way, i.e. the world
> > goes to proportional.
> It is just as iunrealistic to expect everyone to conform to some
> porportional standard, when there simply IS NO STANDARD!

Ah, but I did not suggest that at all, on the contrary, I denoted solutions
like that "brute force" type of solutions, and that does not sound very
complimentary, does it?

> But the point is, they can - everyone has a fixed spaced font of some kind,
> that can be used to view normal ASCII artwork.

If you start asking people to fiddle with their settings, you might as well
ask them to change to Arial, and then claim that aol pics have a portability
of 80% or so.

Whereas in reality (i.e. without making those changes) aol pics have a
portability of only 10% or so, i.e. limited to within aol only.
  
> You forget that much of the Usenet is still 7-bit only!  Why do you think
> the recommendation to use UUENCODE or MIME exists, for sending something
> that contains characters outside the 32-127 range?

I did not suggest any of those bandaid solutions, I did mention that more and
more email and newsgroup software are becoming html aware. More and more
people want to their email and newsgroup articles to look as webpages, I guess!
 
> > The portability is not 100%, but at around 80% and declining, because 20% of
> > email and newsreader software is set to proportional and the trend is towards proportional.
> The portability is 100%, period.  Name one internet-capable computer that
> cannot display ASCII artwork using fixed-spaced font, as dictated by this
> newsgroup.  Go ahead.  Name just ONE.

I think you try to deny that the world is now 20% proportional which limits
the portability to 80%. 

The decisive issue here is not whether the computer can be set to display
ascii pics correctly, the decisive issue here is whether the computer has been
actually set to display ascii pics correctly. Big difference!

And I call it a decisive issue, since the ascii art community is perhaps just
1/1000 of 1% of the Internet. Therefore, it is this little community that has
the burden of finding good solutions, not the 20%. 

And finding good solutions means to ensure that ascii pics are displayed
correctly in the email and newsgroup software that these 20% are using anyway,
without asking them to change settings, without asking them to change their
Internet software, etc. 

(Good solutions exclude "brute force" type of solutions too.)

> > Why is it ascii art if your finger does the paging, and why is it all of a
> > sudden not ascii art if the paging is automated?
> 
> Because that automated paging requires some sort of code.  It might be a
> series of ESCAPE codes, or it might just be a special string of characters
> in the image.

Please provide a quote from the ascii standard prohibiting the addition of
codes, I don't see any.

> You keep asking me to do the impossible - the ASCII standard, like I said,
> is an assumed standard - a standard agreed upon by the vast majority of
> people out there, who have knowledge of the subject.
> The viewer is part of that assumed standard - one is not supposed to need 

So, there is no viewing requirement in the ascii standard.

(I do not want to deliberately exasperate you, but we do need to stick with
the actual ascii standard, not with an assumed ascii standard.)

> No, those myriads of typograyhave ASCII at thier disposal.

OK, my friend, that's what I wanted to get across! Words matter less than the
message that the ascii community has those myriads of typography at their
disposal, see further below also.

> I suggest you repeat the "discussion" then - because I seem to have
> forgotten what the better solution is.

Well, I suggest you to reread the previous articles in this thread. I rather
add the following info/diagram.

Portability of ascii pics in various media.
t = .txt medium
h = .html medium
j = .java medium

   ^
80%|t                                          h
   |    t                                 h
   |        t                         h
   |            t                 h
   |                t        h                 j
   |                    t                 j
   |                 h      t       j
   |            h           j   t
   |        h        j              t
   |    h     j                         t
20%|h j                                     t
   |                     |
===================================================> Time
  now          several years from now

The diagram says that .txt provides less and less protection for ascii pics,
from a good 80% today declining over time. The .html medium provides good
protection for ascii pics, but portability is at a low 20% today, due to the
level of html aware email and newsgroup software, but increasing. Similar for
java, although at even slower ramp-up. 

> You seem to have lost the definition of portability by this statement.
> 
> According to the New American Webster Handy College Dictionary:
> 
> portable, adj. capable of being carried; easily conveyed.  Also, portative,
> adj. -- portability, n.
> 
> In other words, portability means being able to move something (either it be
> an object or a piece of data) from one place to another without a great deal
> of effort.

How about zero effort?

No settings to change, no nothing at all, and still having the ascii pic
correctly displayed, even in a 100% proportional world?


On the "xxx supports yyy" vs "yyy supports xxx" debate, here is a quote from
that section.

> requires the data to be in ASCII format.  In other words, typographical
> settings do not support ASCII.

Now I copy and paste a quote from you from further above.

> No, those myriads of typograyhave ASCII at thier disposal.

Looks like play of words to me.

But again, decisive is that the ascii community has myriads of typography (and
media) at its disposal.

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