Talk: Why I like ascii art

[Here's a little essay someone requested, by email]

Wherever you look in computer journalism, the emphasis is always on
faster computers and more memory and more colors... and more money!

So, when people write about the future of the Internet, they're always
dreaming of real-time video links, multimedia, virtual reality, etc
etc etc.

But for me, what's greatest about the Internet is how efficient it
is at transmitting *text*.  For the same 30 kilobytes you could use
for a small GIF on the WWWeb, you can just as well transmit *fifteen
typewritten pages* of text. (It's not even 'a picture is worth 1000
words'-- it's more like 5000, or better!)  And a videolink uses
millions of times as much bandwidth as would an email conversation...

And ascii text is also the lowest common denominator that allows
*everyone* on the net to share data-- people are starting to extend
email to include graphics and fonts, but these attempts exclude the
majority of users, and we haven't begun to see these formats (like
MIME) posted to netnews...

So the ability of ascii-art to include images in email and netnews
postings could be a very useful technology... if only word-processors
included a simple set of commands for drawing ascii shapes, or
pasting together layers of ascii 'clip art'!

My efforts in exploring ascii-art have been an attempt to see how
much is possible, in representing, eg, maps, or human faces.  I
find that if you devote a great deal of time to it, you can create
some very rich images... so it ought to be possible someday to
have rich libraries of clip-art that everyone can easily integrate
into their text files-- if only the word-processors are revised to
make this easier.

But (alas!) the word-processor designers seem preoccupied with GIFs
and MPEGs and WAV files...


jorn barger
chicago, illinois, usa
sept 11 1995