Re: Netly News article

Dan Strychalski wrote:
> ASCII art and HTML art are both subsets of character graphics. Character
> graphics predate computers by a long shot. There is no reason they cannot
> coexist. HTML art is fine, and I wish you the best, but no matter how long
> HTML art survives, it will not outlast ASCII art. No way.

You said essentially the same thing as me, using different words. Using your
words, what I have said along with the above quote was: "Character graphics
can exist in ascii, html, Java, ActiveX and other media." And in previous
articles, I pointed out that character graphics move from one medium to the
next, from typewriter (that allows for multiple overwrites and other things)
to ascii to html to ActiveX, to Java, etc. 

> You seem to expect that the option to use a monospaced font will be taken
> away from us, and you seem resigned to this. This makes Bill smile.
> 
> If it doesn't work in plaintext, it won't work in HTML, unless we all use
> the SAME proportional font. Again, Bill would like nothing better.

Well, not quite. What I said was, that default fonts in email and newsgroup
software used to be monospace, but that is (slowly) changing to proportional.
The average person who never changes default fonts will see garbage instead of
ascii pics, i.e. more and more people in the rest of the world outside the
small ascii community will see garbage.

With reference to Bill, I pointed out that players other than Bill are moving
away from monospace to proportional. This is a mainstream trend, not a
Microsoft only trend.

HTML has the advantage of adding display instructions in the form of tags,
e.g. use the pre tag for proportional. That will solve the proportional font
problem, but obviously, HTML can do more. HTML offers more possibilities for
character graphics which is beneficial progress. And indeed, I have embraced
this evolution and used to use character graphics in HTML on my website (and
have then moved further on to even more advanced media.)

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