Answer: Ascii art help - Program to create ascii arts?

Looking for the easy way, Mischa Thurnherr <mic...@pluto.ntb.ch> wrote:
>
>Is there somebody who knows if there is a program to create ascii-arts? I 
>heard anything from a program which can convert gifs in ascii arts...
>

While there are programs that will allow you to convert gifs to ascii-art,
there aren't any programs that will allow you to create ascii line-art, such
as the one in your sig and mine.  These are only done by hard work and fingers
at a keyboard.

Gif to ascii converters tend to produce usually very messy pictures and if you
want someone to recognize the picture, you'll have to do quite a bit of
editing on it.  Converting color pictures to ascii are a nightmare.  The ascii
results also tend to be very large.  If you're looking for something for a sig
or plan, don't use a converter unless 1) the original gif is small and you're
willing to put take time to clean it up, or 2) you're very desperate for a
picture to be in ascii.  Check Scarecrow's Web Site to begin finding one of
these programs: http://gagme.wwa.com/~boba/scarecrow.html

A program which _is_ helpful is Figlet which will create large sized ascii
letters and enable you to put them together into words.  You can find this
program at the Figlet Home Page - http://math.uiuc.edu/~chappell/figlet/ 

To summarize:  

	1) If you want ascii line-art, sit at your computer and play
 	   around with the letters on the keyboard.  Practice.

	2) Gif to ascii converts are usually more trouble than they're worth,
	   requiring time to clean up and to rescale the gif to the right
	   size.  Not very practical to use.

	3) The Figlet program is very helpful for ascii lettering.

Hope that helps everyone who is starting out...

-- Daniel

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