Need Advice on Coloring ASCII Text

I'm about to make a website using nothing but ASCII formatting on the
surface with HTML in the background for hyperlinks and text coloring.  I
want to make it look something like the old BBS systems we all used to use
before the web became so popular.

I want to use a WYSIWYG editor to color the text so all I have to do is
lay it out in black and white with a text editor, then paste it in a
WYSIWYG editor and insert links and color the text.  The problem I'm
running in to is the fact that Front Page Express and Dreamweaver only
allow ONE spacebar character to be used at a time, meaning I can't have
five spacebar characters in a row.

Now my second hurdle is the speed at which I can color the text.  Do you
know of an editor that has a column mode to allow you to select a vertical
selection of text, then choose a color?  That would speed things up
immensely.

Thanks for any help,
Involuntary

Anita Doobie - NOW wrote:
> 
> >Subject: Need Advice on Coloring ASCII Text
> >From: Involuntary inv...@earthlink.net
> >Date: 5/9/00 6:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time
> >Message-id: <e82...@4ax.com>
> >
> >I'm about to make a website using nothing but ASCII formatting on the
> >surface with HTML in the background for hyperlinks and text coloring.  I
> >want to make it look something like the old BBS systems we all used to use
> >before the web became so popular.
> 
>      Groovy.
> 
> >I want to use a WYSIWYG editor to color the text so all I have to do is
> >lay it out in black and white with a text editor, then paste it in a
> >WYSIWYG editor and insert links and color the text.  The problem I'm
> >running in to is the fact that Front Page Express and Dreamweaver only
> >allow ONE spacebar character to be used at a time, meaning I can't have
> >five spacebar characters in a row.
> 
>      That should not be if you are typing in Frontpage when you have selected
> that the text is FORMATTED (ascii friendly) text. Select FORMATTED text, it
> should work then.
> 
>      Or... go see Krogg, he's made a fantastic ANSI to HTM converter, wonderful
> stuff. The files end up being very large however (due to the extensive HTM
> formatting for color).
> 
> http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/


BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT wrong!

It was Meph that madethe ansi to htm converter.

German:
http://studenten.freepage.de/meph/ascii/ascii.htm
English:
http://studenten.freepage.de/cgi-bin/feets/freepage_ext/41030x030A/rewrite/meph/ascii/eng/eng.htm

> >Now my second hurdle is the speed at which I can color the text.  Do you
> >know of an editor that has a column mode to allow you to select a vertical
> >selection of text, then choose a color?  That would speed things up
> >immensely.
> 
>      The fastest way I can think of is to not keep it ASCII and color it, but
> to screen capture the ANSI screens and make them JPG or GIF.
>      If you do that, the way to insert links would be to make the ANSI screens
> the background watermark and place the text over it.
> 
>      Also, you could always turn the ANSI into a Shockwave flash application,
> but that would be a LOT of work. I was fooling around with flash for a while
> but my time expired so I forget most of the program. Sorry.
> 

Dude you is gonna have to do it the hard way,unless you want to use layers
or something else that ends up bieng another _hard way_.......

Personally i wouldnt bother with the coloring,but if you GOT to
color it,have fun.



-- 


|"""""<`.THE PRINCE ,'>"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""|
|      `.`/""""""\,','            my sig is too big,      |
|SEE HIS (  /   \ \' SEE HIS      but its really cool.    |
| FACE    \/<> <>\/   SMILE                               |
|         /   W   \          Visit my ascii art site:     |
|       ,'\_|||||_/`.  http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/ |
|     ,','   |||   `.`.     kro...@gtcom.net    |
|____<,' TIME TO DIE `.>____Remove no.to.spam to reply____|

>Subject: Need Advice on Coloring ASCII Text
>From: Involuntary inv...@earthlink.net 
>Date: 5/9/00 6:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <e82...@4ax.com>
>
>I'm about to make a website using nothing but ASCII formatting on the
>surface with HTML in the background for hyperlinks and text coloring.  I
>want to make it look something like the old BBS systems we all used to use
>before the web became so popular.

     Groovy.

>I want to use a WYSIWYG editor to color the text so all I have to do is
>lay it out in black and white with a text editor, then paste it in a
>WYSIWYG editor and insert links and color the text.  The problem I'm
>running in to is the fact that Front Page Express and Dreamweaver only
>allow ONE spacebar character to be used at a time, meaning I can't have
>five spacebar characters in a row.

     That should not be if you are typing in Frontpage when you have selected
that the text is FORMATTED (ascii friendly) text. Select FORMATTED text, it
should work then.

     Or... go see Krogg, he's made a fantastic ANSI to HTM converter, wonderful
stuff. The files end up being very large however (due to the extensive HTM
formatting for color).

http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/

>Now my second hurdle is the speed at which I can color the text.  Do you
>know of an editor that has a column mode to allow you to select a vertical
>selection of text, then choose a color?  That would speed things up
>immensely.

     The fastest way I can think of is to not keep it ASCII and color it, but
to screen capture the ANSI screens and make them JPG or GIF.
     If you do that, the way to insert links would be to make the ANSI screens
the background watermark and place the text over it.

     Also, you could always turn the ANSI into a Shockwave flash application,
but that would be a LOT of work. I was fooling around with flash for a while
but my time expired so I forget most of the program. Sorry.

ObASCII:

O-~*  <--- Binary star system with the big star being fed on by the smaller
star. (Damn, the explainations are more work than the ASCII! :)
-- 
     .-~~-.
    (_^..^_)
      ||||AMC
*Tony's ASCII Zine*
http://www.zinezone.com/users/TonyCucchiara

*Shockwave.com Version 2.0*
http://v2.shockwave.com/

On Tue, 09 May 2000 22:04:26 GMT Involuntary <inv...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
>I'm about to make a website using nothing but ASCII formatting on the
>surface with HTML in the background for hyperlinks and text coloring.  I
>want to make it look something like the old BBS systems we all used to use
>before the web became so popular.
>
>I want to use a WYSIWYG editor to color the text so all I have to do is
>lay it out in black and white with a text editor, then paste it in a
>WYSIWYG editor and insert links and color the text.  The problem I'm
>running in to is the fact that Front Page Express and Dreamweaver only
>allow ONE spacebar character to be used at a time, meaning I can't have
>five spacebar characters in a row.

Use <PRE> or &nbsp;
I'm surprised a WYSIWYG wouldn't handle that automatically.

>Now my second hurdle is the speed at which I can color the text.  Do you
>know of an editor that has a column mode to allow you to select a vertical
>selection of text, then choose a color?  That would speed things up
>immensely.

Maybe Word.
-- 
~    _            ~   . ` '  ,    ^~         ______
^  >(')_, ~~   _           __,      _       '.___  ; *BANG*
~  (_~_/     >(')_,   ` (_~_/     >(')_,       `'\ \
^  ~^~~^~    (_~_/     ~^~~^~     (_~_/           ~~        ICQ:11367619
~      ^~^   ~^~~^~         ~^~   ~^~~^~   email:bateau at jupiterio.net

>Subject: Re: Need Advice on Coloring ASCII Text
>From: Krogg kro...@gtcom.net 
>Date: 5/9/00 10:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <391...@gtcom.net>

>BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT wrong!
>
>It was Meph that madethe ansi to htm converter.
>
>German:
>http://studenten.freepage.de/meph/ascii/ascii.htm
>English:
>
>http://studenten.freepage.de/cgi-bin/feets/freepage_ext/41030x030A/rewrit
e/meph/ascii/eng/eng.htm
>

     Oops, sorry, I knew it some short handle. :) Sorry Meph, and after all you
did for me, I should be shot.

7   <--BANG!
-- 
     .-~~-.
    (_^..^_)
      ||||AMC
*Tony's ASCII Zine*
http://www.zinezone.com/users/TonyCucchiara

*Shockwave.com Version 2.0*
http://v2.shockwave.com/

>Subject: Re: Need Advice on Coloring ASCII Text
>From: ton...@aol.com.net.org  (Anita Doobie - NOW)
>Date: 5/9/00 9:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <200...@ng-ft1.aol.com>
>
>

>     That should not be if you are typing in Frontpage when you have selected
>that the text is FORMATTED (ascii friendly) text. Select FORMATTED text, it
>should work then.

     I forgot to add, if the FORMATTED tag doesn't stay formatted while you are
typing, make sure you hilight ALL OF THE TEXT in the document and then format
the text as FORMATTED. The entire document should be tagged as formatted then.
-- 
     .-~~-.
    (_^..^_)
      ||||AMC
*Tony's ASCII Zine*
http://www.zinezone.com/users/TonyCucchiara

*Shockwave.com Version 2.0*
http://v2.shockwave.com/

On Wed, 10 May 2000 10:17:44 +0800, Bateau
<Its...@Not-A-Real-Address.com> posted a message in news:alt.ascii-art,
which said:

> Use <PRE> or &nbsp;
> I'm surprised a WYSIWYG wouldn't handle that automatically.

Guess what I found that actually works flawlessly.  Microsoft Outlook
Express.  I just compose an HTML e-mail and I can paste formatted text
into it without specializing any options.  I then save the text as an HTML
document.  But OE seems to be a little buggy becuase once I lost a lot of
color formatting and had to redo it.

Also I learned that Dreamweaver takes extra spaces with CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE.

Thanks,
Involuntary

On 10 May 2000 01:50:05 GMT, ton...@aol.com.net.org (Anita Doobie - NOW)
posted a message in news:alt.ascii-art, which said:

> > From: Involuntary inv...@earthlink.net 
> > Message-id: <e82...@4ax.com>
> >
> > I want to use a WYSIWYG editor to color the text so all I have to do
> > is lay it out in black and white with a text editor, then paste it
> > in a WYSIWYG editor and insert links and color the text.  The
> > problem I'm running in to is the fact that Front Page Express and
> > Dreamweaver only allow ONE spacebar character to be used at a time,
> > meaning I can't have five spacebar characters in a row.
> 
>      That should not be if you are typing in Frontpage when you have
> selected that the text is FORMATTED (ascii friendly) text.  Select
> FORMATTED text, it should work then.
> 
>      Or... go see Krogg, he's made a fantastic ANSI to HTM
> converter, wonderful stuff.  The files end up being very large
> however (due to the extensive HTM formatting for color).

Not only that, but an ascii file uses only 1 byte for a space.  HTML uses
6 bytes for non-breaking spaces.  A very small page I began working on
ended up being 22k.  I haven't got the vertical spacing right yet, and
it's nowhere near complete, but if you're interested in seeing a work in
progress and the type of look I'm going for, go here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~involuntary/dbs/cl-disha.htm

If you're using <gasp> 640x480, you'll have to reduce the font size your
browser is using.  It should display fine on anything 800x600 and up.  I
run at 1280x1024 all the time so the layout only takes up half my screen.

> http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/
> 
> > Now my second hurdle is the speed at which I can color the text.  Do
> > you know of an editor that has a column mode to allow you to select
> > a vertical selection of text, then choose a color?  That would speed
> > things up immensely.
> 
>      The fastest way I can think of is to not keep it ASCII and
> color it, but to screen capture the ANSI screens and make them JPG
> or GIF.
>      If you do that, the way to insert links would be to make the
> ANSI screens the background watermark and place the text over it.

Hmmm.  Seems like that might cause some problems with different screen
resolutions, but GIF's and solid colors were made for each other.  I may
give it a try for menu screens to see how it works.

>      Also, you could always turn the ANSI into a Shockwave flash application,
> but that would be a LOT of work. I was fooling around with flash for a while
> but my time expired so I forget most of the program. Sorry.

I never have tried flash.  Since I only have a Pentium 150 non MMX, most
flash sites frustrate me more than anything because they're just plain
jerky...not beef or chicken.  Hehe.

Involuntary

Involuntary wrote:

> Not only that, but an ascii file uses only 1 byte for a space.  HTML uses
> 6 bytes for non-breaking spaces.  A very small page I began working on
> ended up being 22k.  I haven't got the vertical spacing right yet, and
> it's nowhere near complete, but if you're interested in seeing a work in
> progress and the type of look I'm going for, go here:
> 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~involuntary/dbs/cl-disha.htm
> 


Ya might save a little space by using tables...you would
only have to set the font color once for each cell of the
table and you can make the table invisible...

 
-- 


|"""""<`.THE PRINCE ,'>"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""|
|      `.`/""""""\,','            my sig is too big,      |
|SEE HIS (  /   \ \' SEE HIS      but its really cool.    |
| FACE    \/<> <>\/   SMILE                               |
|         /   W   \          Visit my ascii art site:     |
|       ,'\_|||||_/`.  http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/ |
|     ,','   |||   `.`.     kro...@gtcom.net    |
|____<,' TIME TO DIE `.>____Remove no.to.spam to reply____|

Involuntary wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 10 May 2000 10:17:44 +0800, Bateau
> <Its...@Not-A-Real-Address.com> posted a message in news:alt.ascii-art,
> which said:
> 
> > Use <PRE> or &nbsp;
> > I'm surprised a WYSIWYG wouldn't handle that automatically.
> 
> Guess what I found that actually works flawlessly.  Microsoft Outlook
> Express.  I just compose an HTML e-mail and I can paste formatted text
> into it without specializing any options.  I then save the text as an HTML
> document.  But OE seems to be a little buggy becuase once I lost a lot of
> color formatting and had to redo it.
> 
> Also I learned that Dreamweaver takes extra spaces with CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE.
> 
> Thanks,
> Involuntary

You got WAY to many "&nbsp;"'s in there...use <PRE></PRE> 


-- 


|"""""<`.THE PRINCE ,'>"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""|
|      `.`/""""""\,','            my sig is too big,      |
|SEE HIS (  /   \ \' SEE HIS      but its really cool.    |
| FACE    \/<> <>\/   SMILE                               |
|         /   W   \          Visit my ascii art site:     |
|       ,'\_|||||_/`.  http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/ |
|     ,','   |||   `.`.     kro...@gtcom.net    |
|____<,' TIME TO DIE `.>____Remove no.to.spam to reply____|

On Thu, 11 May 2000 02:30:48 -0400, Krogg <kro...@gtcom.net>
posted a message in news:alt.ascii-art, which said:

> Involuntary wrote:
> 
> > Not only that, but an ascii file uses only 1 byte for a space.  HTML uses
> > 6 bytes for non-breaking spaces.  A very small page I began working on
> > ended up being 22k.  I haven't got the vertical spacing right yet, and
> > it's nowhere near complete, but if you're interested in seeing a work in
> > progress and the type of look I'm going for, go here:
> 
> Ya might save a little space by using tables...you would
> only have to set the font color once for each cell of the
> table and you can make the table invisible...

Removing the red asterisk borders around everything would save most of the
space, I think.  I've never used software to build a BBS before but I bet
the colored text on those probably don't use as much space as HTML. :-)

Involuntary

Involuntary writes
>
>I want to use a WYSIWYG editor to color the text so all I have to do is
>lay it out in black and white with a text editor, then paste it in a
>WYSIWYG editor and insert links and color the text.  The problem I'm
[snip]
>Now my second hurdle is the speed at which I can color the text.  Do you
>know of an editor that has a column mode to allow you to select a vertical
>selection of text, then choose a color?  That would speed things up
>immensely.
>
>Thanks for any help,
>Involuntary

[][ hi ...

checkout Meph's ASCII Editor 4.2 for win9x

 http://studenten.freepage.de/meph/ascii/eng/eng.htm

it's the fastest way i know to html-color ascii 
with it you can set the mode to html-color format
load an ascii text or art and then paint the color
on in either single or block mode by selecting a
colour from the color-dialog box and just double-clicking
on the char or drag'n'hi-lite an area and click on
the paint forground or background button of the color-
dialog box and then save as html
it uses the <pre> tag for the ascii and is efficient
with the <font color> tags too

obascii>>>

1        //\\  ___             _ _
2        Y  \\/_/=|      _ ___L_|_\      ____
3       _L  ((|_L_|     L_|_____|__]   ,' = =`---.
4      (/\)(__(____)     (_(_)  (_)    `(_)--(_)-'
cjr
28apr00

[][ see yuz
[][ colin
-- 
. /\_/\   ( () |_ | |\|   _/   |2 .\ |\| |) .\ |_ |_
:( a a(   CJRandall http://www.shieldwolf.demon.co.uk
' \___")  <<bErEALISTICK--=oOo=--pLANfORamIRACLE>>