Feedback on Ascii Essay needed...

A week or so ago, Michael Hamm wrote a great essay on Ascii Art. He
would desperately like some feed back on it. It is now visible for all
to read here:

http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/essay.html


Michael Hamm wrote:
> 
> Hi, Donovan!
> 
> I published my essay (on ASCII) on the World-Wide Web, and got no
> feedback. Zero! Is it good? -- bad? Which parts need improvement? What
> topics are discussed in too much detail? -- what in not enough? What
> opinions did you agree with? -- disagree with? Are there any falsities or
> opinions displayed as facts? ("Displayed" is the wrong word, but you get
> the idea.)
> 
> Would appreciate feedback. Thanks.
> 
> Michael Hamm
> BA, Math, NYU, '00
> msh...@nyu.edu
> http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/


So if you have read it or are going to, please take a moment to respond
to his hard work with some comments, good &/or bad.
-- 
Peace,

Donovan


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Donovan wrote:A week or so ago, Michael Hamm wrote a great essay on
Ascii Art. He
would desperately like some feed back on it. It is now visible for all
to read here:

http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/essay.html


Michael Hamm wrote:
> 
> Hi, Donovan!
> 
> I published my essay (on ASCII) on the World-Wide Web, and got no
> feedback. Zero! Is it good? -- bad? Which parts need improvement? What
> topics are discussed in too much detail? -- what in not enough? What
> opinions did you agree with? -- disagree with? Are there any falsities or
> opinions displayed as facts? ("Displayed" is the wrong word, but you get
> the idea.)
> 
> Would appreciate feedback. Thanks.
> 
> Michael Hamm
> BA, Math, NYU, '00
> msh...@nyu.edu
> http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/


So if you have read it or are going to, please take a moment to respond
to his hard work with some comments, good &/or bad.


Michael, 

I reposted your essay address in a new thread along with your wish for
some feedback.

I felt that it was a great essay. I only wish I could have used it in
college also. *S*

I didn't totally agree with the Stereograms section though. I felt that
even if it is repetitive sections, someone still created them by using
characters used in ascii art to make them. I think as long as you use
the correct set of charcters (to be universally acceptable) and what you
create is some kind of picture it should be considered ascii art.

But hey that is how I feel. Over all, I thought is was a great essay,
even though there were no samples....*S*

-- 
Peace,

Donovan


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        _ { + } _
      ()__|>o<|__()     http://www.gwtc.net/~bakd/bb.html
         (  .  )
       (_)     (_)  Beanies are available from $5.95 and up!!!

Donovan (bak...@gwtc.net) wrote:
: http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/essay.html

[missed original, responding to this]

: Michael Hamm wrote:
: > Would appreciate feedback. Thanks.

Here are a few things I noticed. First of all, while <PRE> is indeed the
proper tag for putting ascii art on the web, I would not recommend it
for text like this. A few <P> and <H2> tags should do wonders, and you
wouldn't have to worry about those anchors messing up your right margin.

|     ASCII art has become common only in the last decade or so, but has

Not quite.. the earliest reference I have handy is a book[1] on my, um,
I suppose you can call it a bookshelf, from 1973 which includes plenty
of ascii art. (or at least letters-and-punctuation-in-any-charset art)
It seems obvious, though, that this form of art has existed as long as
there have been computers with keyboards and printers, and that, as you
go on to state, it continues an even longer tradition of text art.

|three-dimensional.  These are generated by computer -- they need not be, I
|suppose, but it would be extremely difficult for a human to be able to
|draw one correctly, so that a picture appears.
|     An ASCII stereogram is one that uses ASCII characters rather than
|random dots.  These, too, are computer-generated, and do not, in my

I'm not sure whether creating a normal SIRDS by hand is feasible, but
creating an ascii stereogram certainly is - see my .sig for an example.
Admittedly it is a simle one, but once you know the technique it isn't
that hard.

|     With the advent of hypertext -- the format used for most documents on
|the World-Wide Web -- in the early 1990's, the ability to color text and
|publish it --colored -- on the Internet was introduced.  This led to the
|invention of colorized ASCII art.  Color ASCII comes in the same forms as

I'd suppose the first colorized ascii images used something similar to
the ANSI color codes[2] that are still used today and were around long
before HTML.

|exists.  This, though, is the rarer form of ASCII art; generally, it is
|made for purely ornamental purposes.

I digress, but I'd like to point out that, counting by volume, the most
common type of ascii art are probably logos[3] found in login screens,
menus, file descriptions etc.


[1] Basic Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition by David H. Ahl. Actually
from 1978, but claims to be "a major revision of my first book, _101 Basic
Cumpute Games_ published in 1973" on page XI[4]. Wonderful book, contains
such classics as "Amazing", a maze generator by Jack Hauber. One of the
few reasons I'm glad I learnt to program in BASIC.

[2] The ESC[0m type, never mind what they should really be called. I used
to do those pictures by hand. That's right, no ANSI-editor. No text editor
either. Just "COPY CON IMAGE.ANS". Talk about doing it the hard way.

[3] Often little more that what you'd get from FIGLet. I must've had
megabytes of those, back when I hab my BBS running.

[4] Some idiot has torn off pages I to X. Of course I assume I should be
glad I got this thing free at all when it was removed from the library.

-- 
ii 3D .sigXIlmari KaronenAscii 3D .sigIlmari Karonen_Ascii 3D .sigIlmari Kar
fi....@graphic.iltzu@sci.fi.stereo@gra...@sci.fin.stereo@graphicilt
ltzu/ba/http://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/bahttp://www.sci.fi/~iltzu/1bahttp://www.sc
 is a stereogram!><This .sig is a stereogram!><This .sig is a stereogram!><T

ilt...@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) wrote, in part:
>Donovan (bak...@gwtc.net) wrote:
>: http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/essay.html

>: > Would appreciate feedback. Thanks.
>
>Here are a few things I noticed. First of all, while <PRE> is indeed the
>proper tag for putting ascii art on the web, I would not recommend it
>for text like this. A few <P> and <H2> tags should do wonders, and you
>wouldn't have to worry about those anchors messing up your right margin.

I know. It's so much easier to use <pre> (when you're starting with a
preexisting text) then to bother putting all those <p>'s, and I'm lazy by
nature.

>|three-dimensional.  These are generated by computer -- they need not be, I
>|suppose, but it would be extremely difficult for a human to be able to
>|draw one correctly, so that a picture appears.
>|     An ASCII stereogram is one that uses ASCII characters rather than
>|random dots.  These, too, are computer-generated, and do not, in my
>
>I'm not sure whether creating a normal SIRDS by hand is feasible, but
>creating an ascii stereogram certainly is - see my .sig for an example.
>Admittedly it is a simle one, but once you know the technique it isn't
>that hard.

By hand? Not on a keyboard? That's all I meant.

Michael Hamm

>I didn't totally agree with the Stereograms section though. I felt that
>even if it is repetitive sections, someone still created them by using
>characters used in ascii art to make them. I think as long as you use
>the correct set of charcters (to be universally acceptable) and what you
>create is some kind of picture it should be considered ascii art.
>
>But hey that is how I feel. Over all, I thought is was a great essay,
>even though there were no samples....*S*

>Donovan

Bah! I was just going to say exactly the same thing! :-)

I think if stereograms are created purely with the ascii character
set, and there's a picture or even a pattern in it (i.e. some sort
of art) then it qualifies as ascii art. I don't know how that theory
holds up when subjected to stereograms that have been created with a
program though.....

I was totally impressed with the essay too - really well written 
and referenced and pretty objective. (Not sure I could create such 
an objective essay on something I care so much about!)

Nice stuff! :-)

-hayley

Michael Hamm wrote:
> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
[ 8< ]
> >I'm not sure whether creating a normal SIRDS by hand is feasible, but
> >creating an ascii stereogram certainly is - see my .sig for an example.
> >Admittedly it is a simle one, but once you know the technique it isn't
> >that hard.
> 
> By hand? Not on a keyboard? That's all I meant.
> 

On a keyboard!  :)

I'll repeat the URL I posted here a few days ago for you to study:

http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/pics/ascii/junkyard/creative/3D/

-- 
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