Original Usenet thread from alt.ascii-art, started 23 Mar 2003.
hows the ascii os??
alt.ascii-art
· 6 messages · 23 Mar 2003 - 31 Mar 2003
haven't been here for a while, last time i was here the ascii os was under
development [graphically] just wandering how it's comming along??
has anybody managed to do anything beyond imagery??
thanks
..b..
ob-ascii
,.,
|\__/ '|> -"bok"
\ ( ) |
`-\/--'
On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:14:27 +0000 (UTC),
badstyle <spa...@spam.com> wrote:
> has anybody managed to do anything beyond imagery??
IBM. No, I am *not* kidding, it is really true.
VM/CMS by IBM and its successors use ASCII-Art for their user
interface (for windows and the like). All you need is an IBM
mainframe or an emulator.
Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:14:27 +0000, badstyle wrote: > haven't been here for a while, last time i was here the ascii os was under > development [graphically] just wandering how it's comming along?? If by OS you mean a shell, then what's wrong with Norton (or Midnight) Commander?
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003 02:38:45 GMT, lament <ayz...@shaw.NOSPAM.ca> wrote: >> haven't been here for a while, last time i was here the ascii os >> was under development [graphically] just wandering how it's >> comming along?? > > If by OS you mean a shell, then what's wrong with Norton (or > Midnight) Commander? Midnight Commander does *not* use ASCII-Art. It does use (character) graphics mode. Besides that I think he is after something more ascii-graphical. To give some examples how this may look like here is a screenshot taken from 'links-hacked' TUI. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby Home Page (p1 of 9) The Object-Oriented Programming Language Ruby: Programmers' Best Friend Lang +-------------------- Network options --------------------+ * | HTTP proxy (host:port) | * | localhost:8080 | What | | * | FTP proxy (host:port) | +------------------------- FTP options --------------------------+ | Password for anonymous login | | nos...@test.com | G | | | [ OK ] [ Cancel ] | R +----------------------------------------------------------------+ * | [ ] Set time of downloaded files [ HTTP options ] | * | | * | [ FTP options ] | * | | * | [ OK ] [ Cancel ] | * +---------------------------------------------------------+ * * exerb-win32: Exerb for Windo.. http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Even more ASCII-artistic is the TUI of 'elinks'. Screenshot: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby Home Page (1/10) The Object-Oriented Programming Language Ruby: Programmers' Best Friend Language +----------------------- Options manager ------------------------+ | | | [-]- User interface | W | | [-]- Color settings | | | | [+]- Color terminals | | | | [-]- Non-color terminals | | | | [-]- Main menu bar | | | | | [-]- Unselected menu bar item | | | | | | |-- Text color | | | | | | `-- Background color | | | | | [+]- Selected menu bar item | G | | | | [+]- Hotkey | | | | [ Info ] [ Edit ] [ Add ] [ Delete ] [ Save ] [ Close ] | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ R * sys-host: C extension that p.. * sys-uptime: C extension for .. http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ [86396][-----] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Another program that does use ASCII-art is 'mutt'. The thread view of mutt looks like this: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- =ruby-talk@jupp [-] 107# / 424K [threads/date] [61%] Mutt 1.4.1i 45 X 03-03-28 Daniel Carrera 22 | `->Re: Newbie question: 46 X 03-03-28 Weng Lei-QCH1840 41 |*>Re: Newbie question:Does Rub 47 X 03-03-28 Daniel Carrera 19 | `-> 48 X 03-03-28 Weng Lei-QCH1840 31 `*> 49 X 03-03-28 nobu.nokada@softhome 19 Re: Inheriting from WIN32OLE 50 X 03-03-28 Xavier Noria 71 Re: Programming Ruby in more fo 51 X 03-03-28 Yukihiro Matsumoto 15 Re: Array question 52 X 03-03-28 Daniel Carrera 25 |-> 53 X 03-03-28 Tim Bates 18 | |-> 54 X 03-03-28 Daniel Carrera 32 | | |-> 55 X 03-03-28 Daniel Carrera 19 | | | |-> 56 X 03-03-28 Tim Bates 12 | | | |-> 57 X 03-03-28 Daniel Carrera 21 | | | | `-> 58 X 03-03-28 Tim Bates 8 | | | | `-> 59 sX 03-03-28 Eric Hodel 38 | | | `-> 60 X 03-03-28 Pit Capitain 16 | | `-> 61 X 03-03-28 Chris Pine 43 | `-> 62 X 03-03-28 Robert Klemme 12 | `-> 63 X 03-03-28 Yukihiro Matsumoto 12 | `---> 64 X 03-03-28 Michael Campbell 26 | | |-> 65 X 03-03-28 Hal E. Fulton 50 | | | `-> 66 X 03-03-28 Michael Campbell 25 | | | `-> q:Quit d:Del u:Undel s:Save m:Mail r:Reply g:Group ?:Help ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This may give some idea how an ASCII-OS does look like (I did diddle the screenshots by removing some white space so that they fit into 71 characters a line. Of course 80 x 24 is a bit small but that's not what I use here. I use a 132 x 50 *TEXT* mode that is directly supported by my graphics card (higher text resolutions are available but they have too low a refresh rate). And this only is part of what can be done. You can also use TWIG which is a text mode window manager that allows you to have different windows running different programs. Obviously this only makes sense with high resolution text modes so I won't provide a screenshot for that. The major advantage of ASCII-Art over graphics is efficency (especially when you are logged in on a remote machine): To represent a 132 x 50 text display you need approxmimately 5 KB. You wonder why it's not 6.6 KB? Text mainly consists in lowercase characters so you can assume about 6 Bit per character. For a 800 x 600 display at moderate 16 bit color depth you need about 1 MB. In other words: You need a compression ration of 1:200 to reduce the graphics data to what Huffman-encoded ASCII needs. In real life it is rather a factor of 1:400 because ordinary compression routines like bzip2 give you 2.5 KB or even less. I sometimes remotely log in using a very slow connection (modem, downloads running in parallel, effective transfer rate about 0.5 KB per second). Even with that limitation a TUI is still usable. Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
Josef 'Jupp' Schugt wrote: > For a 800 x 600 display at moderate 16 bit color depth you need about > 1 MB. In other words: You need a compression ration of 1:200 to > reduce the graphics data to what Huffman-encoded ASCII needs. In real > life it is rather a factor of 1:400 because ordinary compression > routines like bzip2 give you 2.5 KB or even less. You don't send the picture across you just send the commands to draw it. This is efficient until you say surf the web and you have to send across images to draw. Richard :) -- Will kill for Documentation. A Vic 20 is faster than a C64: 8bit roxs http://dogmilk.homelinux.com/
On Sun, 30 Mar 2003 00:15:02 GMT, Richard James <thi...@all.will.it> wrote: > You don't send the picture across you just send the commands to > draw it. This is efficient until you say surf the web and you have > to send across images to draw. And still the amount of data you have to transfer is an order of magnitude more. Suppose you are running X and some cute window manager. Allmost all the grapical elements *are* pictures you need to send. IIRC lines and rectangles are all for which commands do exist. Let us assume that all that needs to be updated is an icon with 16 bit color depth and a size of 48 x 48. That's 4608 byte without any compression. Compare this to 132 x 50 x 2 = 13200 byte - also without compression. Assuming that the graphical data can be reduced to 1/2 and the textual data to 1/3 (both seems reasonable). Draw you own conclusions, we are getting beyond the subject of this group. OB-ASCII: __ ___ / \ |__) \__/ |__) >;-> Josef 'Jupp' Schugt.
About this thread.
These messages were posted publicly to the newsgroup
alt.ascii-art
in 2003 and are mirrored here unchanged as part of the Historic Archives – only email addresses are masked.
The artwork and text belong to their original authors: if you copy a piece, keep the artist's initials or signature intact and credit them where you can.
Are you one of the authors? Contact us to get your posts attributed, connected to your artist profile, or removed.