want to post ascii art in web chat

wrote:
> 
> some web chats disable the HTML tags that use 'greater than' and
> 'less than' signs but you can still use & nbsp (without the space) to
> put more than one space in posts... is there a program that converts
> ascii art so that it is correctly spaced and aligned just with nbsp's?

* Do these chats use a monospaced or a proportional font?

* You can "encode"  <  as  &lt;  and  >  as &gt;  and you should also
  "encode"  &   as  &amp;

* The replacement thing can be done with a text editor which has a
  "find-and-replace" function.

* The replacement thing can also be done with a fairly simple program
  which can look something like this C program:



#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
  int ch;

  while ((ch = getchar()) != EOF)
    {
      switch(ch)
        {
        case '&': printf("&amp;");     /* & */
          break;
        case '<': printf("&lt;");      /* < */
          break;
        case '>': printf("&gt;");      /* > */
          break;
        default: printf("%c", ch);     /* other character */
        }
    }
}



   (you can add "case" lines with whatever characters you want to
    change...)


* Another alternative is to only use ascii art in chat rooms that are
  designed to handle it, such as mine --.
                                        |
                                        V
-- 
    (,         http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/cgi/asciichat/
    /|__--__                       .                        __--__
    |\ '__                        /|\                        _{ _ 
    `.' / `.,_ _________           |           _________ _,.' (/ `.
    /  ||``._.'             ASCII ART CHAT!             `---'|:||,/
  .'   /|                                                   /|:| \
.'    /\ \         __   __                _                 `/|'\'
 ` `,/ /`,\        \ \ / /__ _ _ ___ _ _ (_)__ __ _         /,'\ \
   .'.'  /|         \ V / -_) '_/ _ \ ' \| / _/ _` |        |\  `.`.
 ,' /   / |          \_/\___|_| \___/_||_|_\__\__,_|        | \   \ `,
- `- -- `-'- -ejm-------------------------------------VK-- -`-' -- -' -

wrote:
> Veronica Karlsson wrote:
> > > some web chats disable the HTML tags that use 'greater than' and
> > > 'less than' signs but you can still use & nbsp (without the space) to
> > > put more than one space in posts... is there a program that converts
> > > ascii art so that it is correctly spaced and aligned just with nbsp's?
> >
> > * Do these chats use a monospaced or a proportional font?
> 
> i think proportional...
> 

Then, since it's a web chat, I think you can forget about using ascii
art there. You may get it to look ok in the font _you_ are using, but
the other people there are probably NOT going to see what you see.

> i did think of that... the results look pretty much distorted when saved
> as a .htm file and viewed with my browser. substituting & nbsp with a
> space on either side (effectively putting in three spaces) worked
> better and i have actually managed to convert two ascii art pics to
> post (in the particular chat i use, you can put in breaks which helps a
> bit) but it required a lot of manual fixing-up and is practically
> impossible with more complex pictures... =(

It doesn't matter if you put in three or four or five   spaces
instead of each real space. Different people use different fonts and
your pictures will end up distorted to many of them.

The only possible solution I can think of is to set a monospaced font to
be your default "proportional" font (yes, you can do that in some
browsers) and then convince all the other people in the chat to do the
same. That is not likely to happen. Or if you can convince the
chatmaster to change the chat so that it uses a monospaced font (good
luck!).


-- 
    (,         http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/cgi/asciichat/
    /|__--__                       .                        __--__
    |\ '__                        /|\                        _{ _ 
    `.' / `.,_ _________           |           _________ _,.' (/ `.
    /  ||``._.'             ASCII ART CHAT!             `---'|:||,/
  .'   /|                                                   /|:| \
.'    /\ \         __   __                _                 `/|'\'
 ` `,/ /`,\        \ \ / /__ _ _ ___ _ _ (_)__ __ _         /,'\ \
   .'.'  /|         \ V / -_) '_/ _ \ ' \| / _/ _` |        |\  `.`.
 ,' /   / |          \_/\___|_| \___/_||_|_\__\__,_|        | \   \ `,
- `- -- `-'- -ejm-------------------------------------VK-- -`-' -- -' -