Work in progress: ASCII art FAQ 3.0.-2

=======================================================================
This version of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the ASCII art
Usenet groups is a development version only, and should not be archived
or reposted. If you're new to this group, please look for a message
posted by Martin Atkins with the subject `[FAQ] New to ascii art? Read
me first!' and read that instead, or you may get horribly confused.

Notes to regulars
-----------------

1. INTRODUCING ADA

Martin Atkins wrote:
>
> .----- On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 12:14:51 -0500, Martin DiViaio posted:
> |All the FAQ documents should be combined into one document. Yes, I
> |know this makes a monster but it does put all the information in one
> |place and gets rid of repetitive information in some documents.
> '----------------------
> That would be the ideal thing, but having a huge document (I feel) may
> turn people away from taking the time to read it, defeating it's
> object. The documents with obvious headings ('Monospaced Fonts. Text
> Editors and ASCII Utils!' and 'Not looking right? Read this') help to
> give newbies (for want of a better word) an obvious place to look for
> the two most asked questions of all. This will need to be kept obvious
> in some way.

My hope is to make many of those other documents redundant by repeating
what they say in the FAQ, without making the FAQ too long. But it would
be quite reasonable for there to be other documents which go off into
far more detail on specific topics -- for example, Martin's registry
patch for Outlook Express 4, or Daniel Au's tutorial on how to start
drawing ASCII art. It's these documents, I think, which should form what
I hereby suggest be called the ASCII-Art Documentation Archive (ADA).

What I'd like to be able to do is give a brief answer to each question
in the FAQ, and then a couple of links to more detailed information at
the end of each answer. For example, at the end of `I like that ASCII
picture -- can I copy it for myself?', I'd have a link to the Copyright
Myths FAQ. And at the end of `How do I draw my own ASCII art?', I'd link
to a few tutorials. And so on.

2. MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WEB ...

Andreas Freise wrote:
>
> Hold it! Do you want to be responsible for the mirror sites
> (well, at least for the URL list, mailing list, etc)
> for ALL those informational documents? Or do you want to create
> two different mirror site lists?? If none of that is the case 
> better talk to Martin first and best wait until there is
> some agreement on how we'd like to do it.

Fair enough. Martin, I'm going to be on holiday for three weeks from the
end of this week, so I'll leave it up to you to organize the list of
mirrors for the ADA. I'll leave decisions over what is and isn't in it
up to you, but if there's useful stuff in it I'll link to it from the
FAQ -- if there's not, I won't. :-)

I'm a bit ambivalent about the actual need for dozens of mirrors myself.
I'm on a fast Internet connection, so perhaps I'm biased, but I think
about half a dozen copies, spread fairly evenly over the Earth's surface
:-), should be more than adequate to guard against slow access or
accidental destruction.

As for filenames, I think the directory on each mirror should be called
ada/ and the files should have the same names on each mirror. The table
of contents should be called index.html, so that it can be linked to
from the FAQ just by saying `http://what.ever/~someone/ada/". If
particular mirrors are on systems which don't automatically look for
index.html in a directory, then they can rename index.html to index.htm
or default.htm or whatever, whenever they unzip the update they receive
from Martin.

3. LINKS 101

llizard wrote:
>
> Things look fine to me so far. I have only one minor point (an html
> issue). I recently found out that for linking to a newsgroup, one must
> include the two slashes after the colon.
> 
> <A HREF="news://alt.ascii-art">alt.ascii-art</a>

Oh No One Mustn't! That's not for *groups*, that's for *servers*.
When you are referring to a group on a specific NNTP server, you use the
slashes -- for example, news://news.canterbury.ac.nz/alt.ascii-art. But
if you're referring to a widely propagated group which you can
reasonably expect to be hosted on any NNTP server, you just put news:alt.ascii-art.

4. FORMAT WARS

Martin Atkins wrote:
>
> I feel that it is easier for all concerned to just have one copy of
> the main FAQ in plain text format... if we have an HTML version and a
> Text version hanging around things will be harder to keep under
> control and keep people updated.

Well, speak for yourself! I've had no problems keeping parallel HTML and
text versions of the FAQ up-to-date over the past two years, and I will
continue to do so. The HTML version contains hypertext links both to its
various subsections (e.g. `see Question 4') and to external documents.

As soon as this FAQ is finished, I'll e-mail Martin both versions (text
and HTML) to put in ADA. So those people who want easy links, and can
put up with the occasional popup, can use the HTML version; and those
who want `just the FAQs, ma'am' can go to the text version.

Everybody happy?

5. BETWEEN THE STYLE SHEETS

I don't think that any mirror-specific formatting should be added
to any of the documents. This is to help people searching the Web for
the documents: search engines can tell if two documents are exactly the
same, and show links to the duplicates underneath the first copy. Any
formatting added means that the documents are no longer exact
duplicates, so the search engines will unnecessarily show them as
separate entries and it will be harder for people searching the Web to
tell what is which.

A couple of years in the future, perhaps, I will include a relative link
in the HTML version of the FAQ to an "../ada.css" which will sit in the
parent directory of ada/ (whichever directory that happens to be for
that mirror): that way they can apply verious styles to their copy if
they so desire, without the actual data in the FAQ file being any
different. Martin could distribute a default ada.css to the mirroring
people, for those who didn't care about doing it themselves.

But, as I say, that's a couple of years away yet. Martin Atkins wrote:
>
> If you use CSS properly it allows you to make it look nice on 'decent'
> browsers while making it usable on older ones, and making it almost
> plain text (very minimal markup). Therefore I believe that that should
> be what is used... might be just me, though.

The problem is, Martin, that modern browsers don't implement CSS
*properly* (not even Opera, although it comes close). In an ideal world
browsers would perfectly implement the parts of CSS which they could,
and leave the rest alone completely; but what both Netscape Navigator
and Internet Explorer (and, to a lesser extent, Opera) do is
*incorrectly* implement parts of CSS, which makes it almost unusable
from a Webmaster's point of view. For now.

As for me, I have style sheets, Java, Javascript, custom colors, and
custom fonts all turned off in my browser, and I have never enjoyed Web
surfing more ...

6. PROGRESS

As before, [bits like this] are notes to myself, and many of them show
where I'm going to insert new stuff. They'll be deleted in the final
version.

Well, I fixed the wonky lettering in the title. I also finished Question
4. I started rewriting Question 5, but it turned out to be a bit more
complicated than I expected -- I think I'll farm this out to a separate
document which can supersede Martin's `ASCII ART NOT LOOKING RIGHT? READ
THIS!' (which, in turn, was based on my FAQ). I'll just shorten Question
5 down to a general instruction to find a fixed-width font, one small
enough not to wrap 72 characters; and I'll include a link to the more
detailed Troubleshooting document. In the meantime, volunteers are
sought to fill in the [???] blanks!

I've updated the Figlet links in Question 10, and trimmed all the dead
ones. One in particular, http://www.sconnect.net/figlet/index.cgi, was
interesting. The address http://www.sconnect.net/ gave me an error like so:
----
Time to upgrade
513 HTTP 2.0 or higher required

The site you have requested requires that your web browser support
version 2.0 or higher of the HTTP standard. The latest versions of
Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer and the America On-Line
web browser all support this standard.
----
I'm using Netscape 4.5, what `latest version' are they on about???

Another, http://www2.webserve.net/gateways/figletgateway.pl, looks to be
all there but doesn't actually do anything. Can someone else confirm this?

I was going to do a pile of other stuff, but this room is really hot and
I'm having trouble staying awake, so ... I won't.

Finally, Martin, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you took the `Ten
Commandments' and put them in a separate document.

bye for now
-- 
Matthew `zzz ... zzzzzzzzz ...' Thomas
Columnist, http://www.newsroom.co.nz/
Webmaster, http://www.ucsa.canterbury.ac.nz/clubs/kakariki/
FAQ maintainer, news:alt.ascii-art

=======================================================================
[Subject:] (FAQ) Welcome to ASCII art
=======================================================================

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  \/  \/  \\__,_||_\\__,\\_//_||_||_||_\\__,    \|_\\_//

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        /\   ((  / //  | ||   ||     ___  _,_ _/|_
       /_\\   \\  ((     ||   ||     __\\'||\) ||
     _/  _\\_/__)) \\__,_||_ _||_   ((_||_||_  \|_


Author: Matthew Thomas (spiff @ 3dmail . com)
Version: 3.0.-2
Last changed: 1999-03-30

NOTE: alt.ascii-art and alt.ascii-art.animation are Usenet discussion
groups. If you are new to Usenet, please read the messages in
news:news.announce.newusers before posting.

This FAQ is regularly posted to news:alt.ascii-art and
news:alt.ascii-art.animation. On the Web, the FAQ and other useful
documents can be found in the ASCII-art Documentation Archive at the
following locations:
*   http://martweb.hypermart.net/ada/
*   http://website.lineone.net/~martin.atkins/ada/
*   http://voices.vossnet.co.uk/a/atkins/ada/
[get list from Martin later]

Contents
--------
1.  What's going on here?
2.  What is ASCII art?
3.  What's ASCII, then?
4.  What *isn't* ASCII art?
5.  How do I view ASCII art properly?
6.  How do I draw my own ASCII art?
7.  So now I've drawn it, how should I post it?
8.  I like that ASCII picture -- can I copy it for myself?
9.  I want a picture of something -- how do I ask for one?
10.  Can someone do me some cool lettering?
11. How do I convert a picture to ASCII art?
12. Where do I find more ASCII art pictures and information?

1.  What's going on here?
--------------------------
    You're probably reading this because it's been posted to
    news:alt.ascii-art or news:alt.ascii-art.animation.  If you're not,
    jump in and take a look. In these Usenet groups people discuss
    ASCII art, request ASCII art, post ASCII art, post improved versions
    or variations of other people's ASCII art, and generally have fun.

2.  What is ASCII art?
----------------------
    I thought you'd never ask! ASCII art is any sort of picture or
    diagram drawn with the printing characters in the ASCII character
    set. (For more about ASCII, see Question 3.)
    
    Probably the most common ASCII art picture is the smiley -- :-) --
    but it gets a lot more sophisticated than that. Here's a small ASCII
    picture of a snow-scene paperweight, drawn by Joan Stark:
               ____
            .-" +' "-.
           /.'.'A_'*`.\
          |:.*'/\-\. ':|
          |:.'.||"|.'*:|
           \:~^~^~^~^:/
            /`-....-'\
       jgs /          \
           `-.,____,.-'

    If this picture looks very strange and you can't really tell what it
    is, don't panic -- see Question 5.
    
    People use ASCII art for a number of reasons. Here are some of them.
    *   It is the most universal computer art form in the world --
        every computer system capable of displaying multi-line text can
        display ASCII art, without needing to have a graphics mode or
        support a particular graphics file format.
    *   An ASCII picture is hundreds of times smaller in file size
        than its GIF or BMP equivalent, while still giving a good idea
        of what something looks like.
    *   It's easy to copy from one file to another (just cut and paste).
    *   It's fun.

3.  What's ASCII, then?
-----------------------
    ASCII (short for the American Standard Code for Information
    Interchange) is a basic set of 128 numbered symbols which almost all
    kinds of computer can display. Here are the ones that are used for
    ASCII art:
    
    032 [space] 048 0   064 @   080 P   096 `   112 p
    033 !       049 1   065 A   081 Q   097 a   113 q
    034 "       050 2   066 B   082 R   098 b   114 r
    035 #       051 3   067 C   083 S   099 c   115 s
    036 $       052 4   068 D   084 T   100 d   116 t
    037 %       053 5   069 E   085 U   101 e   117 u
    038 &       054 6   070 F   086 V   102 f   118 v
    039 '       055 7   071 G   087 W   103 g   119 w
    040 (       056 8   072 H   088 X   104 h   120 x
    041 )       057 9   073 I   089 Y   105 i   121 y
    042 *       058 :   074 J   090 Z   106 j   122 z
    043 +       059 ;   075 K   091 [   107 k   123 {
    044 ,       060 <   076 L   092 \   108 l   124 |
    045 -       061 =   077 M   093 ]   109 m   125 }
    046 .       062 >   078 N   094 ^   110 n   126 ~
    047 /       063 ?   079 O   095 _   111 o
    
    There are other characters in the set (with the numbers 000--031 and
    127), but they can do bad stuff to Usenet readers so you shouldn't
    use them in your pictures (except for character 13, which is used
    to insert a new line).
    
4.  What *isn't* ASCII art?
---------------------------
    ASCII art is a very simple medium, but people are forever trying to
    make it more complicated. The following things are not ASCII art and
    should not be posted to the ASCII art Usenet groups.

    *   ANSI, `extended ASCII', or `high ASCII' art. Many computer
        systems have an extended character set of 256 or more
        characters, based on the ANSI or Unicode character sets and
        having the first 128 characters identical to ASCII. These
        characters should not be used in ASCII art because many types
        of computer system do not display them properly, and even those
        that do do not display them in a standard way (for example, the
        Windows ANSI character set is different from the Macintosh ANSI
        character set).

    *   HTML art. HTML, the language used in Web pages, can be used to
        add special effects such as colours, font size, and (ugh)
        blinking text to ASCII art, and HTML can be read by some
        Usenet readers. However, to many they just appear as a jumble of
        <TAGS> and are totally unrecognizable, so you shouldn't post
        HTML to Usenet. Put it on a Web page instead, and post the
        address to news:alt.ascii-art. See
        http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/asciionpage.htm for
        instructions on how to do this.

    *   ASCII art animated using JavaScript. This relies not only on the
        newsreader being able to display HTML, but also being able to
        run JavaScript. Put it on a Web page instead, and post the
        address to news:alt.ascii-art.animation.

5.  How do I view ASCII art properly?
-------------------------------------
    If none of these pictures posted to news:alt.ascii-art look right,
    don't panic. Just follow these steps.
    
    A.  Look at the following two lines.
        iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
        WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|
        Do the |s at the ends of each line line up?
        * Yes: --> Q
        * No: --> B
    
    B.  What program are you using to view the messages?
        * AOL [???]: --> L
        * Eudora or Eudora Light: --> H
        * Free Agent: --> M
        * Netscape News (Navigator 3 or earlier): --> E
        * Netscape Messenger (Communicator 4.0 or higher): --> F
        * Netscape Navigator 3.0 or lower: --> E
        * Outlook or Outlook Express: --> D
        * Pegasus Mail: --> G
        * Other: --> N
    
    D.  From the View menu, choose Options. Click on the Read tab. Set
        the `[???]' [???] to [???]. Click Ok. Did this fix your problem?
        * Yes: END
        * No: --> Z
    
    E.  From the Options menu, choose Mail and News Preferences. Click
        on the [???] tab. Set the `[???]' combo box to a fixed-width
        font.
        * If you need help choosing a fixed-width font, --> I
        * Otherwise, do this then --> Y
        
    F.  From the Edit menu, choose Preferences. Click on the text of the
        `Mail and Newsgroups' tree item. Set the `Display plain text
        messages and articles with' option to `Fixed width font'. Click
        Ok. Look at the lines again.
        iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
        WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|
        Are they the same length now?
        * Yes: --> END
        * No: --> J
    
    G.  Press the F12 function key.
    
    J.  From the Edit menu, choose Preferences. Expand the `Navigator'
        tree item. Select the `Fonts' tree item. Set the `Fixed width
        font' combo box to a fixed-width font.
        * If you need help choosing a fixed-width font, --> I
        * Otherwise, do this then --> Y
        
    Y.  Click Ok. Look at the lines again:
        iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
        WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|
        Are they the same length now?
        * Yes: END
        * No: --> Z
    
    ----- [from old FAQ]
    
    If a picture you see posted to one of the ASCII art Usenet groups
    looks a complete mess to you, don't panic. There are several
    reasons why it may look weird.

    *   If *none* of the pictures in the group look like what the
        sender describes them as, then  you're probably using a
        proportional font. To view (and draw) ASCII art, you must use a
        fixed-width font -- one where all characters are the same width
        (like on an ordinary typewriter). If you're not sure if your
        font is fixed-width or not, check the following two lines and
        see if they're the same length.


        If they aren't, find the option in your newsreader which lets
        you specify which font to use. If you just have a choice
        between proportional and fixed width, choose fixed width. If
        you have a choice of which font to use, try different ones
        until you find a fixed-width one (using the `i's and `m's above
        as a guide). Popular fixed width fonts include Courier, Monaco,
        Fixedsys; anything with `fixed', `terminal', or `Courier' in
        its name will probably be fixed-width.

        Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) supply newsreaders to
        their customers which, strange as it seems, don't allow them to
        use a fixed-width font. If this applies to you, there's not
        much you can do except to ask them for a newsreader which does;
        or switch ISPs.

    *   If there are a lot of almost-blank lines in the picture, then
        the message is probably suffering from `wrapping'. This
        wrapping may be being done by your newsreader; see if it has an
        option called `wrap long lines' or similar, and make sure it is
        turned off. If this doesn't work, then the wrapping was
        probably done by the news program of the person who sent the
        picture, in which case there's not much you can do -- everybody
        else will be seeing the same thing.

    *   If there are a lot of < and > symbols in the  picture, with
        words like HTML, FONT COLOR, B, I, and so on inside them, then
        the picture has been sent in HTML format [see Question 2], and
        your newsreader does not understand HTML (most newsreaders
        don't).

    *   If you still can't work out what the picture is supposed to be,
        try using a smaller font (if you can) and moving a couple of
        metres away. If it still looks unrecognizable, then it's
        probably a problem with the news program used by the person
        who sent the message -- or maybe it's just a really bad
        picture!


6.  How do I draw my own ASCII art?
-----------------------------------
    [shouldn't have a tutorial here -- point to others instead]
    [mention TheDraw (URL???) and Emacs' M-x picture-mode]

    You don't need a special program to draw ASCII art -- it can be
    drawn using any text editor. Here are a few text editors, and where
    you can get them:
    
    , such as SimpleText or BBEdit in MacOS,
    Notepad in Windows, nedit, vi, or pico in Unix, BEd or AZ in
    AmigaOS, edit in DOS, or any of the various Emacs editors. You can
    use a word processor to draw ASCII art, but remember: (1) use a
    fixed-width font [see Question 4]; and (2) using any special
    formatting (bold/italic/coloured etc) is a waste of time, as it
    will be lost when you post the picture.

    There are some features of editors and word processors which can
    help when drawing ASCII art.
    *   Overtype, also known as overstrike: removes the need for you to
        constantly realign characters using the Backspace, Space, and
        Delete keys. Try the Insert key if there is one on your
        keyboard, or look in your program's Options or Preferences.
    *   Rectangular copy and paste: allows you to select rectangular
        sections of text (not just rows or parts of rows). On programs
        which have this feature, it is usually done by holding down a
        key such as Ctrl while selecting text.
    *   Find/Change: allows you to change all the characters of one
        value to another (eg change all the ~s to "s).

    But before you start, a word about fonts. For ASCII art you should
    use a fixed-width font [see Question 4], because every type of
    computer system is guaranteed to have one, and that after all is
    one of the main reasons ASCII art exists -- because everyone can
    view it. Different fixed- width fonts do vary slightly in the
    height of the characters, but for most drawings this doesn't matter
    that much.

    DON'T try to post pictures drawn in a proportional-width (ie
    non-fixed-width) font: even if you specify the exact font you used,
    the chances of other people being able to read it are pretty slim
    (even `standard' proportional fonts such as Times New Roman can
    vary in width from computer to computer).

    The other thing to be aware of with fonts is the difference between
    serif and sans serif. Here's roughly how an `m' looks in both:
    __ __   __        __   __
     |/  \ /  \     |/  \ /  \
     |    |    |    |    |    |
     |    |    |    |    |    |
    _|_  _|_  _|_   |    |    |

        Serif        Sans serif

    The serif version has little strokes, or serifs, at the end of most
    of the main strokes, while the sans serif version doesn't (sans
    means `without'). For example, Courier is a serif font, and Monaco
    is sans serif. This isn't often important, but if you're using a
    sans serif font, just remember to use the vertical bar (|, above \
    on most keyboards) to draw vertical lines, and not the capital i
    (I), otherwise it will look weird for people using serif fonts. It
    also means that you should think carefully before using characters
    like L and 7 for various corners -- they won't always look that
    good with a serif font.

    One way to make drawing ASCII art easier is to type a row of spaces
    for however wide you want your picture, and then copy this row and
    paste it for however many rows high you think your art will get.
    Then turn overtype on, stick your cursor somewhere in the middle,
    and you're ready to draw.

    If nothing springs to mind immediately, start with the ASCII art
    equivalent of the stick figure:

     O
    /H\ Person
    / \

    Fiddle with it, and see what you can do ...

     A                   _              o           _
     O  Person wearing   O`            _O_         (< = Person about
    /H\ a dunce's hat   /H\ Professor  XHX Angel   /H-' to eat a
    / \                 / \            / \         / \  sandwich...?

    Gradually you'll be able to add things like  scenery around the
    person:

     ___  ,---.
    / __\/---. ._,
     /  \@-.  -(_)-
         @     ' `    Person playing a banjo
        ,P            while sitting against a
        d'O_,         palm tree ...
    ____@/|/________
    ::::@\O_,:::::::
    ::::::::::::mt-3

    Draw your cat, your toaster, your musical instruments, your
    partner, anything that will sit still long enough -- practice
    makes, if not perfect, then at least pretty good. Whether you do
    small drawings (less work involved) or large ones (easier to make a
    drawing recognizable) is up to you.

    The things which give beginning ASCII artists the most trouble are
    usually diagonal lines and circles. Here are some lines of various
    angles:

    |   |   /      ,'      ,-'     _,-'
    |  .'  /     ,'     ,-'    _,-'
    |  |  /    ,'    ,-'   _,-'          __..--""
    | .' /   ,'   ,-'  _,-'      __..--""
    | | /  ,'  ,-'  ,-'  __..--"" _______________

    And here are a few circular shapes:
                                           _____             __
                                        .-'     `-.       ,dP""Yb,
                                      .'           `.   ,d"      "b,
                                     /               \  d'    _   `Y,
                              _     ;                 : 8     8    `b
                    __     ,'" "`.  |                 | `b,_,aP     P
            __    ,'  `.  /       \ :                 ;   """"     d'
          .'  `. /      | |       |  \               /           ,P"
       _  |    | |      / \       /   `.           .'    a,.__,aP"
    o (_) `.__.'  `.__.'   `.___.'      `-._____.-'       `"""''

    The spiral is a good example of *anti-aliasing* -- using the
    particular shape of some characters (especially b, d, and P) to
    smooth the edge of a solid shape.

    A final point: don't use the Tab key. Pressing Tab will go along a
    certain number of spaces in your editor/word processor -- but that
    `certain number' is different for different newsreaders, editors,
    and so on, so your picture may suffer from what is known as `tab
    damage' when other people try to view it. Just use spaces instead.

    [See Question 12 for links to other tutorials on drawing ASCII
    art.]

    [...]

    # (hash/pound):
         a hash symbol on most computers, a pound (currency) symbol on
         some British ones
    | (bar):
         a vertical line in most fonts, but in some it is split in the
         middle
    ^ (caret):
         differs in size depending on the font used
    ~ (tilde):
         appears in the middle of the line in some fonts, at the top in
         others
    ' (apostrophe/single quote):
         tilts southwest-northeast in some fonts, is vertical in others
         (this also applies to the comma (,)).

7.  So now I've drawn it, how should I post it?
-----------------------------------------------
    [subject line, Outlook Express bugs, instructions for common
    Usenet readers]
    [incorporate Colin's warning]
    [link to Martin's patch for OE 4]
    [what exactly is the situation with OE 5???]

    It doesn't matter if your ASCII art isn't particularly good; we'd
    like to see it anyway. We won't be rude about it (although you'd
    better tell us what it is, or we might ask :-), but if it shows
    potential, you may find that other people will `re-diddle' it --
    change a few characters, make it a bit better, and re-post it.

    HOWEVER, there are a few things you should check before you
    post any piece of ASCII art.

    *   Are you sending it as plain text? Some news programs,
        particularly those built in to Web browsers, read and write
        messages in HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the language which
        Web pages are written in). HTML allows colours and (using
        JavaScript) animations in ASCII art, but few newsreaders
        support it, and those which don't will show a whole lot of
        garbage text with your picture hidden inside it.

        So if you have one of these HTML-sending programs, PLEASE
        select the option which tells it to send messages as plain text
        only. If you have a picture which uses HTML for a particular
        feature (such as  colours or animation), put it on a Web page,
        and post the URL of the page to alt.ascii-art, rather than
        posting the whole picture.

    *   Is it under 72 characters wide? Most news readers can only show
        lines which are under either 72, 76, or 80 characters wide, so
        if your picture is wider than 72 characters it may get wrapped
        [see Question 4). Also remove any unnecessary space characters
        from the end of each line of the picture, to prevent lines from
        being too long (and getting wrapped) without your realizing.

    *   Have you used any control codes? Inserting control codes (ASCII
        characters 0 to 31) in a picture can sometimes achieve
        interesting effects on your computer screen or news reader,
        such as reversing text, changing its colour, and so on. DO NOT
        post any of these pictures to alt.ascii-art, for two reasons:

        1.  the effects that the control codes have on your news reader
            are almost certainly going to be  different from those on
            the thousands of other news readers that other people use

        2.  on some news readers, control codes can cause  messed up
            displays, messages not appearing, or (in some cases) the
            news reader crashing.

    *   If your first line starts with one or more spaces, stick a
        dummy line (such as -- or .) above it, to prevent the spaces
        from being ignored by your news program (this only applies to
        some news programs, and only to the first line of the
        message).

    If you're not sure about whether your message will turn out ok,
    post it to a test group (such as news:alt.test or news:misc.test)
    first and make sure (using a different newsreader, if you can) that
    you can read it ok.

    [See Question 10 for advice on posting someone else's ASCII art.]

8.  I like that ASCII picture -- can I copy it for myself?
----------------------------------------------------------
    [incorporate Krogg's politeness levels]

    Don't assume that if somebody posts something to a Usenet group,
    that gives you the right to use it however you like; copyright
    laws still apply. For more information, see the article `Copyright
    Myths FAQ: 10 big myths about copyright explained' in
    news:news.announce.newusers. (It is also available at
    http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html.)

    ASCII art is often an exception to this rule, though: generally,
    ASCII artists don't mind if you copy their pictures and repost them
    or put them on your own Web site, as long as you don't make any
    money out of them. There are a few important conditions, however.

    *   If the picture contains a few letters in one corner which don't
        seem to be part of the picture, they're the artist's initials.
        DO NOT remove these initials -- would you cut away the part of
        a Van Gogh painting containing his name?  Leaving the initials
        on is a small price to pay for being able to use the picture
        for free.

    *   If you're going to use a picture in your signature file, or in
        a place (such as a log-in screen) which means you're going to
        be using it a lot, you should really e-mail the artist (or post
        to the newsgroup, if you don't know their address) and ask for
        permission, because otherwise people may get the mistaken
        impression that you were the one who drew the picture.

    As for posting other people's ASCII art, after a discussion in
    news:alt.ascii-art the following rules were agreed upon:
    1.  If an ASCII ART picture has initials on it, leave them on when
        posting it.
    2.  If an ASCII ART picture doesn't have initials on it, mention
        that you didn't draw it when posting it.
    3.  If somebody posts a picture without initials and you have an
        original copy with initials, feel free to repost the original
        version. The repost ought not to be taken personally, as we all
        know that ASCII art often loses proper credits. Responses to the
        repost are not necessary.
    [Donovan]


9.  I want a picture of something -- how do I ask for one?
----------------------------------------------------------
     Yes, if we find it interesting. Give your request the subject
     `REQ: xyz' if you're looking for a picture of an xyz, then in the
     message describe more exactly what you're looking for. Generally,
     the more specific you are, the more likely you are to get someone
     to draw what you want: if you just say something like `can someone
     draw me a fish' then you're not likely to get many replies,
     because people won't be sure whether or not they're wasting their
     time by drawing something you won't want. If you don't have Web
     access, mention this fact, otherwise you may get replies
     consisting only of URLs for the kind of pictures you're looking
     for.

10.  Can someone do me some cool lettering?
-------------------------------------------
    Probably not, unless we're REALLY bored. The reason for this is
    that there is a program called Figlet which does that sort of thing
    automatically -- you type in `Jane Smith', and you get back

        ___              __,
       ( /              (          o _/_ /
        / __,  _   _     `.  _ _  ,  /  /_
      _/_(_/(_/ /_(/_  (___)/ / /_(_(__/ /_
     //
    (/

    in this and a whole lot of other fonts. The ASCII text-art produced
    by Figlet can be quite stunning, so it's best to try it first
    before asking for help from the newsgroup.

    The Figlet home page is at
    http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/chai/figlet.html. This site links
    to the FTP site ftp://ftp.internexus.net/pub/figlet/, where you can
    download versions of the program for  many different platforms.

    You can run Figlet on the Web by going to one of the following sites
    and choosing your text and options on the Web page. Different sites
    offer different options (e.g. multiple fonts at once, justification,
    and limited line length). Some of these sites also provide an e-mail
    Figlet service for people with browsers which don't support forms.

    *    http://www.surfplaza.com/figlet/
    *    http://home.cern.ch/~rigaut/FigletJava.html
    *    http://schnoggo.com/figlet.html
    *    http://www.inf.utfsm.cl/cgi-bin/figlet/
    *    http://saigon.mit.edu/dinhyen/figlet/figlet.html
    *    http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/bwagner/FIGLET/figlet.pl
    *    http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~mcchau3/cgi-bin/express.html
    *    http://www.webserve.com/gateways/figletgateway.pl.
    [Shimrod, Veronica Karlsson]

    [need to check links]

    If Figlet doesn't produce the kind of results you want, THEN you
    can post to alt.ascii-art with your request. Make sure that you
    include:
    *   the fact that you have already tried Figlet, or don't have
        access to it  (otherwise you will probably just get told to use
        it)
    *   a description of the kind of lettering you want, along with any
        other symbols or logos which you would like incorporated into
        it.



11. How do I convert a picture to ASCII art?
--------------------------------------------
    There are computer programs available which convert graphics files
    of a particular format (usually GIF) to ASCII art. They go by names
    such as ascgif, gifa, gifscii, and gif2ascii. Do a Web search for
    any of these programs to find places where you can download them.
    Try:

         gopher://twinbrook.cis.uab.edu/1A/atools.70
         ftp://ftp.wwa.com/pub/Scarecrow/Gifscii/.

    However, the output from these programs is often poor (fiddling
    with the picture in an image-editing program beforehand may help).
    In this case, you can post a request to news:alt.ascii-art asking
    for someone to `asciify' it, but PLEASE DON'T POST THE PICTURE
    ITSELF. To save downloading time for people reading the messages,
    if possible give the URL (Web address) of the picture instead.

    If you saw the picture on a Web page, you can find out its URL by
    right-clicking on it (on the Macintosh, right-clicking,
    Ctrl-clicking, or holding down the mouse button) and selecting
    `Open this image' (or its equivalent for your Web browser), then
    copy the URL from the Location bar to your news program (make sure
    you copy it exactly).

    If the picture is not on a Web site anywhere, put it up on your own
    site (if you have one), or get a friend to put it up on their site,
    and post the URL to alt.ascii-art. If you can't do this, post your
    request to alt.ascii-art and wait for an artist to reply, then
    e-mail the picture to them.


12. Where do I find more ASCII art pictures and information?
------------------------------------------------------------
    There are three ASCII art Usenet groups. news:alt.ascii-art is
    the main group, where most of the discussion takes place.

    news:rec.arts.ascii is a `best-of' group, for posting the best
    ASCII art from news:alt.ascii-art. It is a moderated group -- all
    messages pass through an intermediary (the moderator) who checks
    them for appropriateness before sending them to the group itself.
    The advantage of this is that there isn't any unwanted advertising
    in the group; however, the frequency of postings to
    news:rec.arts.ascii is extremely low at the time of writing (it was
    resurrected in November 1997 after the previous moderator, Bob
    Allison (`Scarecrow') retired in December 1996).

    If your news server isn't set up to allow direct posting to
    news:rec.arts.ascii, e-mail your message to the moderator, Don
    Bertino: bertino-@-netcom-.-com (remove the dashes first).

    news:alt.ascii-art.animation is specifically for discussion and
    postings of animated ASCII art [see Question 12].
    
    Lots of ASCII artists put up libraries of their own and others'
    ASCII art on their Web sites, as well as tutorials on how to draw
    ASCII art. Allen Mullen has links to many of these sites at
    http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/2695/links.htm.

    Yahoo also has a page dedicated to ASCII art, at
    http://www.yahoo.com/Arts/Visual_Arts/Computer_Generated/ASCII_Art/.
    And try Joan Stark's Web site: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/.

    To find out how to animate ASCII art using JavaScript, see
    http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Marina/4942/faq_hta.htm and
    http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/animlesson.htm.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
[This stuff yet to be resorted from the old FAQ]


11.  What should I know about signature files?
----------------------------------------------

    A signature file (or `sig' for short; not to be confused with the
    initials added to an ASCII picture) is a small, personalized text
    file which an e-mail or news program adds to the end of every
    message a person sends -- the equivalent of a letterhead for
    dead-tree (paper) mail. Usually it contains little more than the
    person's name, organization, and e-mail address, and an
    inspirational quote of some sort; but some people like to
    incorporate ASCII art into their signature files as well.

    The biggest problem that this causes is the number of lines that
    the signature file takes up. This is a topic which, despite its
    lack of importance in relation to global warming, violence in
    society, and so on, can be the subject of heated arguments. To be
    brief, (almost) no-one will complain if your signature file is four
    lines long or fewer -- and it is quite possible to draw good ASCII
    pictures which are that small. Some examples are at:

    *   http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/~kenter/sigs.html
    *   http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/sigs.htm.

    Some e-mail programs don't allow you to have a signature file which
    is longer than four lines, while others just complain. Five or six
    lines is usually acceptable, but  any longer, and you're starting to
    take the risk that your signature will be longer than some of your
    e-mail messages; this wouldn't really make sense on paper, so it
    isn't really acceptable in cyberspace either. The exception is in
    messages posted to news:alt.ascii-art itself -- we're used to seeing
    long sigs, so we won't complain.

    But no matter what the length of your signature, make sure it's
    fewer than 72 characters wide, otherwise it may end up a horrible
    mess [see Question 6].

12. Where can I find more ASCII art?
------------------------------------


THE END


This document may be freely copied as long as Matthew Thomas is
identified as the original author.

.----- On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:20:48 +1200, Matthew Thomas posted:
|
|1. INTRODUCING ADA
|
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> .----- On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 12:14:51 -0500, Martin DiViaio posted:
|> |All the FAQ documents should be combined into one document. Yes, I
|> |know this makes a monster but it does put all the information in one
|> |place and gets rid of repetitive information in some documents.
|> '----------------------
|> That would be the ideal thing, but having a huge document (I feel) may
|> turn people away from taking the time to read it, defeating it's
|> object. The documents with obvious headings ('Monospaced Fonts. Text
|> Editors and ASCII Utils!' and 'Not looking right? Read this') help to
|> give newbies (for want of a better word) an obvious place to look for
|> the two most asked questions of all. This will need to be kept obvious
|> in some way.
|
|My hope is to make many of those other documents redundant by repeating
|what they say in the FAQ, without making the FAQ too long. But it would
|be quite reasonable for there to be other documents which go off into
|far more detail on specific topics -- for example, Martin's registry
|patch for Outlook Express 4, or Daniel Au's tutorial on how to start
|drawing ASCII art. It's these documents, I think, which should form what
|I hereby suggest be called the ASCII-Art Documentation Archive (ADA).
'-----------------------------------
Wow! That's a much better name than I came up with :o)

.-----------------------------------
|What I'd like to be able to do is give a brief answer to each question
|in the FAQ, and then a couple of links to more detailed information at
|the end of each answer. For example, at the end of `I like that ASCII
|picture -- can I copy it for myself?', I'd have a link to the Copyright
|Myths FAQ. And at the end of `How do I draw my own ASCII art?', I'd link
|to a few tutorials. And so on.
'-----------------------------------
That is an excellent idea, and makes the FAQ what it should be ... a
document to find answers to questions that are frequently asked. New users
can get a brief look at the FAQ, while people seeking answers to a
particular question can refer to the more detailed and specialised
documents.

.-----------------------------------
|2. MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WEB ...
'-----------------------------------

    |||||
   | o o |
   |  >  |      |_| /\ |
   | \_/ | ---' | |/""\o
    \___/
     | |   Nice one :o)


.------------------------------------
|Andreas Freise wrote:
|>
|> Hold it! Do you want to be responsible for the mirror sites
|> (well, at least for the URL list, mailing list, etc)
|> for ALL those informational documents? Or do you want to create
|> two different mirror site lists?? If none of that is the case 
|> better talk to Martin first and best wait until there is
|> some agreement on how we'd like to do it.
|
|Fair enough. Martin, I'm going to be on holiday for three weeks from the
|end of this week, so I'll leave it up to you to organize the list of
|mirrors for the ADA. I'll leave decisions over what is and isn't in it
|up to you, but if there's useful stuff in it I'll link to it from the
|FAQ -- if there's not, I won't. :-)
'-------------------------------
OK, I'll get going on that one this week while I'm not at school.

.-------------------------------
|I'm a bit ambivalent about the actual need for dozens of mirrors myself.
|I'm on a fast Internet connection, so perhaps I'm biased, but I think
|about half a dozen copies, spread fairly evenly over the Earth's surface
|:-), should be more than adequate to guard against slow access or
|accidental destruction.
'-------------------------------
We don't *need* loads, but surely if people are willing to host mirrors
that's all the better isn't it?

.-------------------------------
|As for filenames, I think the directory on each mirror should be called
|ada/ and the files should have the same names on each mirror. The table
|of contents should be called index.html, so that it can be linked to
|from the FAQ just by saying `http://what.ever/~someone/ada/". If
|particular mirrors are on systems which don't automatically look for
|index.html in a directory, then they can rename index.html to index.htm
|or default.htm or whatever, whenever they unzip the update they receive
|from Martin.
'-------------------------------
That's kinda what I've been saying, but I said aaafaq/ :o)
There is however the problem of hosting sites (Geocities?) that don't allow
the use of directories. I'm not supposed to have one on my
voices.vossnet.co.uk/a/atkins/ account, but working at my ISP gives me
certain abilities beyond the average user. :o)
For these people they will need to call the file ada.htm or something, and
also the perpose of the files being named aaasomething.txt on my current FAQ
site was exactly this... so that there is little chance of interferance with
other files on the site.

.-------------------------------
|3. LINKS 101
|
|llizard wrote:
|>
|> Things look fine to me so far. I have only one minor point (an html
|> issue). I recently found out that for linking to a newsgroup, one must
|> include the two slashes after the colon.
|> 
|> <A HREF="news://alt.ascii-art">alt.ascii-art</a>
|
|Oh No One Mustn't! That's not for *groups*, that's for *servers*.
|When you are referring to a group on a specific NNTP server, you use the
|slashes -- for example, news://news.canterbury.ac.nz/alt.ascii-art. But
|if you're referring to a widely propagated group which you can
|reasonably expect to be hosted on any NNTP server, you just put news:alt.ascii-art.
'--------------------------
Well, I was half right in my reply to this in another thread above. ;o)

.--------------------------
|4. FORMAT WARS
|
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> I feel that it is easier for all concerned to just have one copy of
|> the main FAQ in plain text format... if we have an HTML version and a
|> Text version hanging around things will be harder to keep under
|> control and keep people updated.
|
|Well, speak for yourself! I've had no problems keeping parallel HTML and
|text versions of the FAQ up-to-date over the past two years, and I will
|continue to do so. The HTML version contains hypertext links both to its
|various subsections (e.g. `see Question 4') and to external documents.
|
|As soon as this FAQ is finished, I'll e-mail Martin both versions (text
|and HTML) to put in ADA. So those people who want easy links, and can
|put up with the occasional popup, can use the HTML version; and those
|who want `just the FAQs, ma'am' can go to the text version.
|
|Everybody happy?
'---------------------------
That of course is the ideal solution to the HTML/TXT arguement... use both.
I have had trouble maintaining two versions on my minifaq since it started
(the one on my website is very out of date) but hey, if you're doing it! <g>

.---------------------------
|5. BETWEEN THE STYLE SHEETS
|
|I don't think that any mirror-specific formatting should be added
|to any of the documents. This is to help people searching the Web for
|the documents: search engines can tell if two documents are exactly the
|same, and show links to the duplicates underneath the first copy. Any
|formatting added means that the documents are no longer exact
|duplicates, so the search engines will unnecessarily show them as
|separate entries and it will be harder for people searching the Web to
|tell what is which.
'-------------------------
That's a good arguement which I hadn't thought of. There is the problem of
code added to the tops and bottoms of pages by GeoCities, Tripod, Hypermart
etc... but that's another thing entirely.

That's an interesting point actually ... should people add GeoGuides to the
FAQ documents or allow the dreaded popups to take over?

.----------------------------
|A couple of years in the future, perhaps, I will include a relative link
|in the HTML version of the FAQ to an "../ada.css" which will sit in the
|parent directory of ada/ (whichever directory that happens to be for
|that mirror): that way they can apply verious styles to their copy if
|they so desire, without the actual data in the FAQ file being any
|different. Martin could distribute a default ada.css to the mirroring
|people, for those who didn't care about doing it themselves.
'---------------------------
The version I have already has a .css file, but that's up for review of
course!

.---------------------------
|But, as I say, that's a couple of years away yet.
'---------------------------
Yes.

.---------------------------
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> If you use CSS properly it allows you to make it look nice on 'decent'
|> browsers while making it usable on older ones, and making it almost
|> plain text (very minimal markup). Therefore I believe that that should
|> be what is used... might be just me, though.
|
|The problem is, Martin, that modern browsers don't implement CSS
|*properly* (not even Opera, although it comes close). In an ideal world
|browsers would perfectly implement the parts of CSS which they could,
|and leave the rest alone completely; but what both Netscape Navigator
|and Internet Explorer (and, to a lesser extent, Opera) do is
|*incorrectly* implement parts of CSS, which makes it almost unusable
|from a Webmaster's point of view. For now.
'------------------------
It depends really. I hate to do it again, but I'm going to point at my
current FAQ site. That uses CSS, but only simple bits of it. This means that
ot should work fine on any CSS browser. It works on Netscape 4 and on
Internet Explorer 4 and 5... I've tried it. As for Opera, well I need to be
at work to try that, since my work pc has that and a few other browsers on
it.

.--------------------------
|As for me, I have style sheets, Java, Javascript, custom colors, and
|custom fonts all turned off in my browser, and I have never enjoyed Web
|surfing more ...
'--------------------------
There's my point. The user has the choice of whether they want CSS or not!
Llizard chooses to not even use a CSS enabled browser!

.--------------------------
|6. PROGRESS
|
|As before, [bits like this] are notes to myself, and many of them show
|where I'm going to insert new stuff. They'll be deleted in the final
|version.
|
|Well, I fixed the wonky lettering in the title. I also finished Question
|4. I started rewriting Question 5, but it turned out to be a bit more
|complicated than I expected -- I think I'll farm this out to a separate
|document which can supersede Martin's `ASCII ART NOT LOOKING RIGHT? READ
|THIS!' (which, in turn, was based on my FAQ). I'll just shorten Question
|5 down to a general instruction to find a fixed-width font, one small
|enough not to wrap 72 characters; and I'll include a link to the more
|detailed Troubleshooting document. In the meantime, volunteers are
|sought to fill in the [???] blanks!
'-----------------------------
Yes you correctly spot that my document was based on yours, and I'm sorry I
never mentioned that fact (I don't know *why* I didn't, and thought I had!)
- I'd say that I'd update it, but if you are going to supersede it there's
no point <g>)

.--------------------------------
|I've updated the Figlet links in Question 10, and trimmed all the dead
|ones. One in particular, http://www.sconnect.net/figlet/index.cgi, was
|interesting. The address http://www.sconnect.net/ gave me an error like so:
|----
|Time to upgrade
|513 HTTP 2.0 or higher required
|
|The site you have requested requires that your web browser support
|version 2.0 or higher of the HTTP standard. The latest versions of
|Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer and the America On-Line
|web browser all support this standard.
|----
|I'm using Netscape 4.5, what `latest version' are they on about???
'----------------------
The SysAdmin is confused. *Very* confused.

.-----------------------------
|Another, http://www2.webserve.net/gateways/figletgateway.pl, looks to be
|all there but doesn't actually do anything. Can someone else confirm this?
'----------------------------
Not at the moment I can't! (I'm offline)

.----------------------------
|I was going to do a pile of other stuff, but this room is really hot and
|I'm having trouble staying awake, so ... I won't.
'---------------------------
No rush! :o)

.---------------------------
|Finally, Martin, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you took the `Ten
|Commandments' and put them in a separate document.
'----------------------------
No sooner said than done.

.----------------------------
|
|This FAQ is regularly posted to news:alt.ascii-art and
|news:alt.ascii-art.animation. On the Web, the FAQ and other useful
|documents can be found in the ASCII-art Documentation Archive at the
|following locations:
|*   http://martweb.hypermart.net/ada/
|*   http://website.lineone.net/~martin.atkins/ada/
|*   http://voices.vossnet.co.uk/a/atkins/ada/
|[get list from Martin later]
'------------------------
hehe... I guess I've got no option but to change that now! (Not that I mind
of course!)

.---------------------------
|    
|    G.  Press the F12 function key.
'------------------
Do what? What's that meant to do?

.---------------------    
|    J.  From the Edit menu, choose Preferences. Expand the `Navigator'
|        tree item. Select the `Fonts' tree item. Set the `Fixed width
|        font' combo box to a fixed-width font.
|        * If you need help choosing a fixed-width font, --> I
|        * Otherwise, do this then --> Y
'-----------------
I think I've just got what you are doing :o)   --- sorry!
        
.------------------------
|9.  I want a picture of something -- how do I ask for one?
|----------------------------------------------------------
|     Yes, if we find it interesting. Give your request the subject
|     `REQ: xyz' if you're looking for a picture of an xyz, then in the
'------------------------
This still doesn't make sense! *nudge, nudge* :o)

.----------------------------
|    that there is a program called Figlet which does that sort of thing
'---------------------------
<pedantic>FIGlet should be spelt like that, with a capital FIG and a small
let. Ask either of the three of the authors FIG stands for!</pedantic>

.----------------------------
|
|12. Where can I find more ASCII art?
|------------------------------------
|
|
|THE END
|
'----------------------------
HAHAHA SEARCHING IS FUTILE --- YOU WILL NOT FIND ANY ASCII ART, ANYWHERE!!!
YAHAHAHAHA!!!



-Martin
                  ______   ----.
                .'      '-'   (D'.    .---------------------------------.
              -"""""--.-'         '-. |         _______     |===========|
           .-'      -'  .'/         / ||\/| /\ |_)|  | |\ | |mart.atkins|
        .-'        '..-'.''.       =  ||  |/--\| \| _|_| \| |    @      |
       /             '-'    '.___.'   |    ___ ___     __   |bigfoot.com|
      /                          \    |  /\ ||/ | |\ |(_    |===========|
      |     ..             .      |   | /--\||\_|_| \|__)   |Reply ROT13|
    _ |    /  '.          |       |   |---------------------------------|
   / '|   '     \         |      /    |#####.""""""""""""""""""""".#####|
  (   \          |         '.   '     |#####| HAPPY EASTER TO ALL |#####|
   \_/ '..       |          .'.  '    |#####'_____________________'#####|
          '    '' '''"\----'   \  \__ '---------------------------------'
           '__________/  mga    '____\\

In article <370...@news.vossnet.net>, zne...@ovtsbbg.pbz
(Martin Atkins) wrote:
> 
> .----- On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:20:48 +1200, Matthew Thomas posted:
[snip]
> |llizard wrote:
> |>
> |> Things look fine to me so far. I have only one minor point (an html
> |> issue). I recently found out that for linking to a newsgroup, one must
> |> include the two slashes after the colon.
> |>
> |> <A HREF="news://alt.ascii-art">alt.ascii-art</a>
> |
> |Oh No One Mustn't! That's not for *groups*, that's for *servers*.
> |When you are referring to a group on a specific NNTP server, you use the
> |slashes -- for example, news://news.canterbury.ac.nz/alt.ascii-art. But
> |if you're referring to a widely propagated group which you can
> |reasonably expect to be hosted on any NNTP server, you just put news:alt.ascii-art.
> '--------------------------
> Well, I was half right in my reply to this in another thread above. ;o)

Okay okay okay!!!  How many times must I apologize for this terrible
gaff? 

Once again, I humbly beg your collective pardons. I now stand corrected
and promise that I will never again put my oar in where it doesn't
belong.


    +_    +_    +_     +_    +_    +_   \   / |_|  ^  +  ') |
     C     C     C      C     C     C    \^/  | | /-\ |  !  .
   </\_  </\_  </\_   </\_  </\_  </\_
   /\    /\    /\     /\    /\    /\    |\ | [ \  / [ |)  ') ') ')
  / /   / /   / /    / /   / /   / /    | \| [  \/  [ |\  !  !  !

(These are supposed to be sailors from the HMS Pinafore)


NOTE: I do not pick up my mail from the idirect address. If you
are e-mailing and hit the reply button, add an "e" to "freent";
its absense is to stop the torment of automatic mailers.
--
       ___                        cq547@freene+.+oron+o.on.ca
     _/   |    ,^%---                         llizard aka ejm
    |_____|  __<_ \  Well...  hardly ever!
      --- ==   >/
    [_____]  __>,^          ASCII-ar+, ASCII & gif anima+ions
  ejm|   |  //| |        www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/

In article <370...@spamfree.land>, Matthew Thomas
<mpt...@spamfree.land> wrote:
> 
> =======================================================================
> This version of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the ASCII art
> Usenet groups is a development version only, and should not be archived
> or reposted. If you're new to this group, please look for a message
> posted by Martin Atkins with the subject `[FAQ] New to ascii art? Read
> me first!' and read that instead, or you may get horribly confused.
[snip]
> 1.  What's going on here?
> --------------------------
>     You're probably reading this because it's been posted to
>     news:alt.ascii-art or news:alt.ascii-art.animation.  If you're not,
>     jump in and take a look. In these Usenet groups people discuss
>     ASCII art, request ASCII art, post ASCII art, post improved versions
>     or variations of other people's ASCII art, and generally have fun.

Oh Yeah!!! That's why we're here!!!

...to have
   ____
  |      |    |   |\   |     |
  |__    |    |   | \  |     |
  |      |    |   |  \ |     |
  |       \__/    |   \|     .


The sun is shining. It's a beautiful day.
 
                                 /
                                //
 ` ! ,                         ///
--( ) -      ###              /[_]
  , \       #####              [][
          #{##{####  ---%^,    [_]
         ###\#}#}###   /  />   [][
          ###\{/###      [  >^^[_]
           # }}{ #       [_|_\_[][
       ###   }}{           [_][__]
      #\#}#} }}{@  @       [___][]
      ##\/## }}{|@@|/      [_][__]
,ejm,,,,}{,,,}{{||||_______[___][]

I think I'll leave this FAQstuff up to you others and


NOTE: I do not pick up my mail from the idirect address. If you
are e-mailing and hit the reply button, add an "e" to "freent";
its absense is to stop the torment of automatic mailers.
--
            ,^%--- ha
         _._<  \ ha    ...go out for a bicycle ride.
        (_.-->      ha
         \ __>,^                               llizard aka ejm
        -.`\/  -.                  cq547@freene+.+oron+o.on.ca
      ( * )~\( * )           ASCII-ar+, ASCII & gif anima+ions
  ejm  `-   ~ `-          www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/

Matthew Thomas wrote:
>...

I'm reposting this because (1) many a.a-aers are, ad nauseum, citing
mistakes and issues from my last draft (3.0.-1) and which I've already
dealt with, (2) my previous posting of this newer draft (3.0.-2) doesn't
seem to have propagated to the point where anyone has seen it, and (3)
by dealing with a lot of the repetitive discussion here hopefully I'll
reduce the amount of unnecessary FAQ-related discussion in the group so
the rest of you can get on with actual pictures.

Have a nice day
-- 
mpt

...

=======================================================================
This version of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the ASCII art
Usenet groups is a development version only, and should not be archived
or reposted. If you're new to this group, please look for a message
posted by Martin Atkins with the subject `[FAQ] New to ascii art? Read
me first!' and read that instead, or you may get horribly confused.

Notes to regulars
-----------------

1. INTRODUCING ADA

Martin Atkins wrote:
>
> .----- On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 12:14:51 -0500, Martin DiViaio posted:
> |All the FAQ documents should be combined into one document. Yes, I
> |know this makes a monster but it does put all the information in one
> |place and gets rid of repetitive information in some documents.
> '----------------------
> That would be the ideal thing, but having a huge document (I feel) may
> turn people away from taking the time to read it, defeating it's
> object. The documents with obvious headings ('Monospaced Fonts. Text
> Editors and ASCII Utils!' and 'Not looking right? Read this') help to
> give newbies (for want of a better word) an obvious place to look for
> the two most asked questions of all. This will need to be kept obvious
> in some way.

My hope is to make many of those other documents redundant by repeating
what they say in the FAQ, without making the FAQ too long. But it would
be quite reasonable for there to be other documents which go off into
far more detail on specific topics -- for example, Martin's registry
patch for Outlook Express 4, or Daniel Au's tutorial on how to start
drawing ASCII art. It's these documents, I think, which should form what
I hereby suggest be called the ASCII-Art Documentation Archive (ADA).

What I'd like to be able to do is give a brief answer to each question
in the FAQ, and then a couple of links to more detailed information at
the end of each answer. For example, at the end of `I like that ASCII
picture -- can I copy it for myself?', I'd have a link to the Copyright
Myths FAQ. And at the end of `How do I draw my own ASCII art?', I'd link
to a few tutorials. And so on.

2. MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WEB ...

Andreas Freise wrote:
>
> Hold it! Do you want to be responsible for the mirror sites
> (well, at least for the URL list, mailing list, etc)
> for ALL those informational documents? Or do you want to create
> two different mirror site lists?? If none of that is the case 
> better talk to Martin first and best wait until there is
> some agreement on how we'd like to do it.

Fair enough. Martin, I'm going to be on holiday for three weeks from the
end of this week, so I'll leave it up to you to organize the list of
mirrors for the ADA. I'll leave decisions over what is and isn't in it
up to you, but if there's useful stuff in it I'll link to it from the
FAQ -- if there's not, I won't. :-)

I'm a bit ambivalent about the actual need for dozens of mirrors myself.
I'm on a fast Internet connection, so perhaps I'm biased, but I think
about half a dozen copies, spread fairly evenly over the Earth's surface
:-), should be more than adequate to guard against slow access or
accidental destruction.

As for filenames, I think the directory on each mirror should be called
ada/ and the files should have the same names on each mirror. The table
of contents should be called index.html, so that it can be linked to
from the FAQ just by saying `http://what.ever/~someone/ada/". If
particular mirrors are on systems which don't automatically look for
index.html in a directory, then they can rename index.html to index.htm
or default.htm or whatever, whenever they unzip the update they receive
from Martin.

3. LINKS 101

llizard wrote:
>
> Things look fine to me so far. I have only one minor point (an html
> issue). I recently found out that for linking to a newsgroup, one must
> include the two slashes after the colon.
> 
> <A HREF="news://alt.ascii-art">alt.ascii-art</a>

Oh No One Mustn't! That's not for *groups*, that's for *servers*.
When you are referring to a group on a specific NNTP server, you use the
slashes -- for example, news://news.canterbury.ac.nz/alt.ascii-art. But
if you're referring to a widely propagated group which you can
reasonably expect to be hosted on any NNTP server, you just put 
news:alt.ascii-art.

4. FORMAT WARS

Martin Atkins wrote:
>
> I feel that it is easier for all concerned to just have one copy of
> the main FAQ in plain text format... if we have an HTML version and a
> Text version hanging around things will be harder to keep under
> control and keep people updated.

Well, speak for yourself! I've had no problems keeping parallel HTML and
text versions of the FAQ up-to-date over the past two years, and I will
continue to do so. The HTML version contains hypertext links both to its
various subsections (e.g. `see Question 4') and to external documents.

As soon as this FAQ is finished, I'll e-mail Martin both versions (text
and HTML) to put in ADA. So those people who want easy links, and can
put up with the occasional popup, can use the HTML version; and those
who want `just the FAQs, ma'am' can go to the text version.

Everybody happy?

5. BETWEEN THE STYLE SHEETS

I don't think that any mirror-specific formatting should be added
to any of the documents. This is to help people searching the Web for
the documents: search engines can tell if two documents are exactly the
same, and show links to the duplicates underneath the first copy. Any
formatting added means that the documents are no longer exact
duplicates, so the search engines will unnecessarily show them as
separate entries and it will be harder for people searching the Web to
tell what is which.

A couple of years in the future, perhaps, I will include a relative link
in the HTML version of the FAQ to an "ada.css" file which will sit in
the same directory as ada/ (whichever directory that happens to be for
that mirror): that way individual mirrors can apply verious styles to
their copy if they so desire, without the actual data in the FAQ file
being any different. Martin could distribute a default ada.css to the
mirroring people, for those who didn't care about doing it themselves.

But, as I say, that's a couple of years away yet. Martin Atkins wrote:
>
> If you use CSS properly it allows you to make it look nice on 'decent'
> browsers while making it usable on older ones, and making it almost
> plain text (very minimal markup). Therefore I believe that that should
> be what is used... might be just me, though.

The problem is, Martin, that modern browsers don't implement CSS
*properly* (not even Opera, although it comes close). In an ideal world
browsers would perfectly implement the parts of CSS which they could,
and leave the rest alone completely; but what both Netscape Navigator
and Internet Explorer (and, to a lesser extent, Opera) do is
*incorrectly* implement parts of CSS, which makes it almost unusable
from a Webmaster's point of view. For now.

As for me, I have style sheets, Java, Javascript, custom colors, and
custom fonts all turned off in my browser, and I have never enjoyed Web
surfing more ...

And as for navigation, if you want to keep navigation with the rest of
your own site while the surfer is in ADA, you could always use a
navigation frame up-top. <ducks/>

6. PROGRESS

As before, [bits like this] are notes to myself, and many of them show
where I'm going to insert new stuff. They'll be deleted in the final
version.

Well, I fixed the wonky lettering in the title. I also finished Question
4. I started rewriting Question 5, but it turned out to be a bit more
complicated than I expected -- I think I'll farm this out to a separate
document which can supersede Martin's `ASCII ART NOT LOOKING RIGHT? READ
THIS!' (which, in turn, was based on my FAQ). I'll just shorten Question
5 down to a general instruction to find a fixed-width font, one small
enough not to wrap 72 characters; and I'll include a link to the more
detailed Troubleshooting document. In the meantime, volunteers are
sought to fill in the [???] blanks!

I've updated the Figlet links in Question 10, and trimmed all the dead
ones. One in particular, http://www.sconnect.net/figlet/index.cgi, was
interesting. The address http://www.sconnect.net/ gave me an error like so:
----
Time to upgrade
513 HTTP 2.0 or higher required

The site you have requested requires that your web browser support
version 2.0 or higher of the HTTP standard. The latest versions of
Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer and the America On-Line
web browser all support this standard.
----
I'm using Netscape 4.5, what `latest version' are they on about???

Another, http://www2.webserve.net/gateways/figletgateway.pl, looks to be
all there but doesn't actually do anything. Can someone else confirm this?

I was going to do a pile of other stuff, but this room is really hot and
I'm having trouble staying awake, so ... I won't.

Finally, Martin, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you took the `Ten
Commandments' and put them in a separate document.

bye for now
-- 
Matthew `zzz ... zzzzzzzzz ...' Thomas
Columnist, http://www.newsroom.co.nz/
Webmaster, http://www.ucsa.canterbury.ac.nz/clubs/kakariki/
FAQ maintainer, news:alt.ascii-art

=======================================================================
[Subject:] (FAQ) Welcome to ASCII art
=======================================================================

__  __   __     _,
\\  \\   / ___ '||  ___  ___ __  _  _   ___    _/|_ ___
 \\ /\\ / //_\) || // \)// \\ ||'||'|| //_\)    || // \\
  \/  \/  \\__,_||_\\__,\\_//_||_||_||_\\__,    \|_\\_//

              ___   ___ ____ ____
        /\   ((  / //  | ||   ||     ___  _,_ _/|_
       /_\\   \\  ((     ||   ||     __\\'||\) ||
     _/  _\\_/__)) \\__,_||_ _||_   ((_||_||_  \|_


Author: Matthew Thomas (spiff @ 3dmail . com)
Version: 3.0.-2
Last changed: 1999-03-30

NOTE: alt.ascii-art and alt.ascii-art.animation are Usenet discussion
groups. If you are new to Usenet, please read the messages in
news:news.announce.newusers before posting.

This FAQ is regularly posted to news:alt.ascii-art and
news:alt.ascii-art.animation. On the Web, the FAQ and other useful
documents can be found in the ASCII-art Documentation Archive at the
following locations:
*   http://martweb.hypermart.net/ada/
*   http://website.lineone.net/~martin.atkins/ada/
*   http://voices.vossnet.co.uk/a/atkins/ada/
[get list from Martin later]

Contents
--------
1.  What's going on here?
2.  What is ASCII art?
3.  What's ASCII, then?
4.  What *isn't* ASCII art?
5.  How do I view ASCII art properly?
6.  How do I draw my own ASCII art?
7.  So now I've drawn it, how should I post it?
8.  I like that ASCII picture -- can I copy it for myself?
9.  I want a picture of something -- how do I ask for one?
10.  Can someone do me some cool lettering?
11. How do I convert a picture to ASCII art?
12. Where do I find more ASCII art pictures and information?

1.  What's going on here?
--------------------------
    You're probably reading this because it's been posted to
    news:alt.ascii-art or news:alt.ascii-art.animation.  If you're not,
    jump in and take a look. In these Usenet groups people discuss
    ASCII art, request ASCII art, post ASCII art, post improved versions
    or variations of other people's ASCII art, and generally have fun.

2.  What is ASCII art?
----------------------
    I thought you'd never ask! ASCII art is any sort of picture or
    diagram drawn with the printing characters in the ASCII character
    set. (For more about ASCII, see Question 3.)
    
    Probably the most common ASCII art picture is the smiley -- :-) --
    but it gets a lot more sophisticated than that. Here's a small ASCII
    picture of a snow-scene paperweight, drawn by Joan Stark:
               ____
            .-" +' "-.
           /.'.'A_'*`.\
          |:.*'/\-\. ':|
          |:.'.||"|.'*:|
           \:~^~^~^~^:/
            /`-....-'\
       jgs /          \
           `-.,____,.-'

    If this picture looks very strange and you can't really tell what it
    is, don't panic -- see Question 5.
    
    People use ASCII art for a number of reasons. Here are some of them.
    *   It is the most universal computer art form in the world --
        every computer system capable of displaying multi-line text can
        display ASCII art, without needing to have a graphics mode or
        support a particular graphics file format.
    *   An ASCII picture is hundreds of times smaller in file size
        than its GIF or BMP equivalent, while still giving a good idea
        of what something looks like.
    *   It's easy to copy from one file to another (just cut and paste).
    *   It's fun.

3.  What's ASCII, then?
-----------------------
    ASCII (short for the American Standard Code for Information
    Interchange) is a basic set of 128 numbered symbols which almost all
    kinds of computer can display. Here are the ones that are used for
    ASCII art:
    
    032 [space] 048 0   064 @   080 P   096 `   112 p
    033 !       049 1   065 A   081 Q   097 a   113 q
    034 "       050 2   066 B   082 R   098 b   114 r
    035 #       051 3   067 C   083 S   099 c   115 s
    036 $       052 4   068 D   084 T   100 d   116 t
    037 %       053 5   069 E   085 U   101 e   117 u
    038 &       054 6   070 F   086 V   102 f   118 v
    039 '       055 7   071 G   087 W   103 g   119 w
    040 (       056 8   072 H   088 X   104 h   120 x
    041 )       057 9   073 I   089 Y   105 i   121 y
    042 *       058 :   074 J   090 Z   106 j   122 z
    043 +       059 ;   075 K   091 [   107 k   123 {
    044 ,       060 <   076 L   092 \   108 l   124 |
    045 -       061 =   077 M   093 ]   109 m   125 }
    046 .       062 >   078 N   094 ^   110 n   126 ~
    047 /       063 ?   079 O   095 _   111 o
    
    There are other characters in the set (with the numbers 000--031 and
    127), but they can do bad stuff to Usenet readers so you shouldn't
    use them in your pictures (except for character 13, which is used
    to insert a new line).
    
4.  What *isn't* ASCII art?
---------------------------
    ASCII art is a very simple medium, but people are forever trying to
    make it more complicated. The following things are not ASCII art and
    should not be posted to the ASCII art Usenet groups.

    *   ANSI, `extended ASCII', or `high ASCII' art. Many computer
        systems have an extended character set of 256 or more
        characters, based on the ANSI or Unicode character sets and
        having the first 128 characters identical to ASCII. These
        characters should not be used in ASCII art because many types
        of computer system do not display them properly, and even those
        that do do not display them in a standard way (for example, the
        Windows ANSI character set is different from the Macintosh ANSI
        character set).

    *   HTML art. HTML, the language used in Web pages, can be used to
        add special effects such as colours, font size, and (ugh)
        blinking text to ASCII art, and HTML can be read by some
        Usenet readers. However, to many they just appear as a jumble of
        <TAGS> and are totally unrecognizable, so you shouldn't post
        HTML to Usenet. Put it on a Web page instead, and post the
        address to news:alt.ascii-art. See
        http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/asciionpage.htm for
        instructions on how to do this.

    *   ASCII art animated using JavaScript. This relies not only on the
        newsreader being able to display HTML, but also being able to
        run JavaScript. Put it on a Web page instead, and post the
        address to news:alt.ascii-art.animation.

5.  How do I view ASCII art properly?
-------------------------------------
    If none of these pictures posted to news:alt.ascii-art look right,
    don't panic. Just follow these steps.
    
    A.  Look at the following two lines.
        iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
        WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|
        Do the |s at the ends of each line line up?
        * Yes: --> Q
        * No: --> B
    
    B.  What program are you using to view the messages?
        * AOL [???]: --> L
        * Eudora or Eudora Light: --> H
        * Free Agent: --> M
        * Netscape News (Navigator 3 or earlier): --> E
        * Netscape Messenger (Communicator 4.0 or higher): --> F
        * Netscape Navigator 3.0 or lower: --> E
        * Outlook or Outlook Express: --> D
        * Pegasus Mail: --> G
        * Other: --> N
    
    D.  From the View menu, choose Options. Click on the Read tab. Set
        the `[???]' [???] to [???]. Click Ok. Did this fix your problem?
        * Yes: END
        * No: --> Z
    
    E.  From the Options menu, choose Mail and News Preferences. Click
        on the [???] tab. Set the `[???]' combo box to a fixed-width
        font.
        * If you need help choosing a fixed-width font, --> I
        * Otherwise, do this then --> Y
        
    F.  From the Edit menu, choose Preferences. Click on the text of the
        `Mail and Newsgroups' tree item. Set the `Display plain text
        messages and articles with' option to `Fixed width font'. Click
        Ok. Look at the lines again.
        iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
        WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|
        Are they the same length now?
        * Yes: --> END
        * No: --> J
    
    G.  Press the F12 function key.
    
    J.  From the Edit menu, choose Preferences. Expand the `Navigator'
        tree item. Select the `Fonts' tree item. Set the `Fixed width
        font' combo box to a fixed-width font.
        * If you need help choosing a fixed-width font, --> I
        * Otherwise, do this then --> Y
        
    Y.  Click Ok. Look at the lines again:
        iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii|
        WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|
        Are they the same length now?
        * Yes: END
        * No: --> Z
    
    ----- [from old FAQ]
    
    If a picture you see posted to one of the ASCII art Usenet groups
    looks a complete mess to you, don't panic. There are several
    reasons why it may look weird.

    *   If *none* of the pictures in the group look like what the
        sender describes them as, then  you're probably using a
        proportional font. To view (and draw) ASCII art, you must use a
        fixed-width font -- one where all characters are the same width
        (like on an ordinary typewriter). If you're not sure if your
        font is fixed-width or not, check the following two lines and
        see if they're the same length.


        If they aren't, find the option in your newsreader which lets
        you specify which font to use. If you just have a choice
        between proportional and fixed width, choose fixed width. If
        you have a choice of which font to use, try different ones
        until you find a fixed-width one (using the `i's and `m's above
        as a guide). Popular fixed width fonts include Courier, Monaco,
        Fixedsys; anything with `fixed', `terminal', or `Courier' in
        its name will probably be fixed-width.

        Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) supply newsreaders to
        their customers which, strange as it seems, don't allow them to
        use a fixed-width font. If this applies to you, there's not
        much you can do except to ask them for a newsreader which does;
        or switch ISPs.

    *   If there are a lot of almost-blank lines in the picture, then
        the message is probably suffering from `wrapping'. This
        wrapping may be being done by your newsreader; see if it has an
        option called `wrap long lines' or similar, and make sure it is
        turned off. If this doesn't work, then the wrapping was
        probably done by the news program of the person who sent the
        picture, in which case there's not much you can do -- everybody
        else will be seeing the same thing.

    *   If there are a lot of < and > symbols in the  picture, with
        words like HTML, FONT COLOR, B, I, and so on inside them, then
        the picture has been sent in HTML format [see Question 2], and
        your newsreader does not understand HTML (most newsreaders
        don't).

    *   If you still can't work out what the picture is supposed to be,
        try using a smaller font (if you can) and moving a couple of
        metres away. If it still looks unrecognizable, then it's
        probably a problem with the news program used by the person
        who sent the message -- or maybe it's just a really bad
        picture!


6.  How do I draw my own ASCII art?
-----------------------------------
    [shouldn't have a tutorial here -- point to others instead]
    [mention TheDraw (URL???) and Emacs' M-x picture-mode]

    You don't need a special program to draw ASCII art -- it can be
    drawn using any text editor. Here are a few text editors, and where
    you can get them:
    
    , such as SimpleText or BBEdit in MacOS,
    Notepad in Windows, nedit, vi, or pico in Unix, BEd or AZ in
    AmigaOS, edit in DOS, or any of the various Emacs editors. You can
    use a word processor to draw ASCII art, but remember: (1) use a
    fixed-width font [see Question 4]; and (2) using any special
    formatting (bold/italic/coloured etc) is a waste of time, as it
    will be lost when you post the picture.

    There are some features of editors and word processors which can
    help when drawing ASCII art.
    *   Overtype, also known as overstrike: removes the need for you to
        constantly realign characters using the Backspace, Space, and
        Delete keys. Try the Insert key if there is one on your
        keyboard, or look in your program's Options or Preferences.
    *   Rectangular copy and paste: allows you to select rectangular
        sections of text (not just rows or parts of rows). On programs
        which have this feature, it is usually done by holding down a
        key such as Ctrl while selecting text.
    *   Find/Change: allows you to change all the characters of one
        value to another (eg change all the ~s to "s).

    But before you start, a word about fonts. For ASCII art you should
    use a fixed-width font [see Question 4], because every type of
    computer system is guaranteed to have one, and that after all is
    one of the main reasons ASCII art exists -- because everyone can
    view it. Different fixed- width fonts do vary slightly in the
    height of the characters, but for most drawings this doesn't matter
    that much.

    DON'T try to post pictures drawn in a proportional-width (ie
    non-fixed-width) font: even if you specify the exact font you used,
    the chances of other people being able to read it are pretty slim
    (even `standard' proportional fonts such as Times New Roman can
    vary in width from computer to computer).

    The other thing to be aware of with fonts is the difference between
    serif and sans serif. Here's roughly how an `m' looks in both:
    __ __   __        __   __
     |/  \ /  \     |/  \ /  \
     |    |    |    |    |    |
     |    |    |    |    |    |
    _|_  _|_  _|_   |    |    |

        Serif        Sans serif

    The serif version has little strokes, or serifs, at the end of most
    of the main strokes, while the sans serif version doesn't (sans
    means `without'). For example, Courier is a serif font, and Monaco
    is sans serif. This isn't often important, but if you're using a
    sans serif font, just remember to use the vertical bar (|, above \
    on most keyboards) to draw vertical lines, and not the capital i
    (I), otherwise it will look weird for people using serif fonts. It
    also means that you should think carefully before using characters
    like L and 7 for various corners -- they won't always look that
    good with a serif font.

    One way to make drawing ASCII art easier is to type a row of spaces
    for however wide you want your picture, and then copy this row and
    paste it for however many rows high you think your art will get.
    Then turn overtype on, stick your cursor somewhere in the middle,
    and you're ready to draw.

    If nothing springs to mind immediately, start with the ASCII art
    equivalent of the stick figure:

     O
    /H\ Person
    / \

    Fiddle with it, and see what you can do ...

     A                   _              o           _
     O  Person wearing   O`            _O_         (< = Person about
    /H\ a dunce's hat   /H\ Professor  XHX Angel   /H-' to eat a
    / \                 / \            / \         / \  sandwich...?

    Gradually you'll be able to add things like  scenery around the
    person:

     ___  ,---.
    / __\/---. ._,
     /  \@-.  -(_)-
         @     ' `    Person playing a banjo
        ,P            while sitting against a
        d'O_,         palm tree ...
    ____@/|/________
    ::::@\O_,:::::::
    ::::::::::::mt-3

    Draw your cat, your toaster, your musical instruments, your
    partner, anything that will sit still long enough -- practice
    makes, if not perfect, then at least pretty good. Whether you do
    small drawings (less work involved) or large ones (easier to make a
    drawing recognizable) is up to you.

    The things which give beginning ASCII artists the most trouble are
    usually diagonal lines and circles. Here are some lines of various
    angles:

    |   |   /      ,'      ,-'     _,-'
    |  .'  /     ,'     ,-'    _,-'
    |  |  /    ,'    ,-'   _,-'          __..--""
    | .' /   ,'   ,-'  _,-'      __..--""
    | | /  ,'  ,-'  ,-'  __..--"" _______________

    And here are a few circular shapes:
                                           _____             __
                                        .-'     `-.       ,dP""Yb,
                                      .'           `.   ,d"      "b,
                                     /               \  d'    _   `Y,
                              _     ;                 : 8     8    `b
                    __     ,'" "`.  |                 | `b,_,aP     P
            __    ,'  `.  /       \ :                 ;   """"     d'
          .'  `. /      | |       |  \               /           ,P"
       _  |    | |      / \       /   `.           .'    a,.__,aP"
    o (_) `.__.'  `.__.'   `.___.'      `-._____.-'       `"""''

    The spiral is a good example of *anti-aliasing* -- using the
    particular shape of some characters (especially b, d, and P) to
    smooth the edge of a solid shape.

    A final point: don't use the Tab key. Pressing Tab will go along a
    certain number of spaces in your editor/word processor -- but that
    `certain number' is different for different newsreaders, editors,
    and so on, so your picture may suffer from what is known as `tab
    damage' when other people try to view it. Just use spaces instead.

    [See Question 12 for links to other tutorials on drawing ASCII
    art.]

    [...]

    # (hash/pound):
         a hash symbol on most computers, a pound (currency) symbol on
         some British ones
    | (bar):
         a vertical line in most fonts, but in some it is split in the
         middle
    ^ (caret):
         differs in size depending on the font used
    ~ (tilde):
         appears in the middle of the line in some fonts, at the top in
         others
    ' (apostrophe/single quote):
         tilts southwest-northeast in some fonts, is vertical in others
         (this also applies to the comma (,)).

7.  So now I've drawn it, how should I post it?
-----------------------------------------------
    [subject line, Outlook Express bugs, instructions for common
    Usenet readers]
    [incorporate Colin's warning]
    [link to Martin's patch for OE 4]
    [what exactly is the situation with OE 5???]

    It doesn't matter if your ASCII art isn't particularly good; we'd
    like to see it anyway. We won't be rude about it (although you'd
    better tell us what it is, or we might ask :-), but if it shows
    potential, you may find that other people will `re-diddle' it --
    change a few characters, make it a bit better, and re-post it.

    HOWEVER, there are a few things you should check before you
    post any piece of ASCII art.

    *   Are you sending it as plain text? Some news programs,
        particularly those built in to Web browsers, read and write
        messages in HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the language which
        Web pages are written in). HTML allows colours and (using
        JavaScript) animations in ASCII art, but few newsreaders
        support it, and those which don't will show a whole lot of
        garbage text with your picture hidden inside it.

        So if you have one of these HTML-sending programs, PLEASE
        select the option which tells it to send messages as plain text
        only. If you have a picture which uses HTML for a particular
        feature (such as  colours or animation), put it on a Web page,
        and post the URL of the page to alt.ascii-art, rather than
        posting the whole picture.

    *   Is it under 72 characters wide? Most news readers can only show
        lines which are under either 72, 76, or 80 characters wide, so
        if your picture is wider than 72 characters it may get wrapped
        [see Question 4). Also remove any unnecessary space characters
        from the end of each line of the picture, to prevent lines from
        being too long (and getting wrapped) without your realizing.

    *   Have you used any control codes? Inserting control codes (ASCII
        characters 0 to 31) in a picture can sometimes achieve
        interesting effects on your computer screen or news reader,
        such as reversing text, changing its colour, and so on. DO NOT
        post any of these pictures to alt.ascii-art, for two reasons:

        1.  the effects that the control codes have on your news reader
            are almost certainly going to be  different from those on
            the thousands of other news readers that other people use

        2.  on some news readers, control codes can cause  messed up
            displays, messages not appearing, or (in some cases) the
            news reader crashing.

    *   If your first line starts with one or more spaces, stick a
        dummy line (such as -- or .) above it, to prevent the spaces
        from being ignored by your news program (this only applies to
        some news programs, and only to the first line of the
        message).

    If you're not sure about whether your message will turn out ok,
    post it to a test group (such as news:alt.test or news:misc.test)
    first and make sure (using a different newsreader, if you can) that
    you can read it ok.

    [See Question 10 for advice on posting someone else's ASCII art.]

8.  I like that ASCII picture -- can I copy it for myself?
----------------------------------------------------------
    [incorporate Krogg's politeness levels]

    Don't assume that if somebody posts something to a Usenet group,
    that gives you the right to use it however you like; copyright
    laws still apply. For more information, see the article `Copyright
    Myths FAQ: 10 big myths about copyright explained' in
    news:news.announce.newusers. (It is also available at
    http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html.)

    ASCII art is often an exception to this rule, though: generally,
    ASCII artists don't mind if you copy their pictures and repost them
    or put them on your own Web site, as long as you don't make any
    money out of them. There are a few important conditions, however.

    *   If the picture contains a few letters in one corner which don't
        seem to be part of the picture, they're the artist's initials.
        DO NOT remove these initials -- would you cut away the part of
        a Van Gogh painting containing his name?  Leaving the initials
        on is a small price to pay for being able to use the picture
        for free.

    *   If you're going to use a picture in your signature file, or in
        a place (such as a log-in screen) which means you're going to
        be using it a lot, you should really e-mail the artist (or post
        to the newsgroup, if you don't know their address) and ask for
        permission, because otherwise people may get the mistaken
        impression that you were the one who drew the picture.

    As for posting other people's ASCII art, after a discussion in
    news:alt.ascii-art the following rules were agreed upon:
    1.  If an ASCII ART picture has initials on it, leave them on when
        posting it.
    2.  If an ASCII ART picture doesn't have initials on it, mention
        that you didn't draw it when posting it.
    3.  If somebody posts a picture without initials and you have an
        original copy with initials, feel free to repost the original
        version. The repost ought not to be taken personally, as we all
        know that ASCII art often loses proper credits. Responses to the
        repost are not necessary.
    [Donovan]


9.  I want a picture of something -- how do I ask for one?
----------------------------------------------------------
     Yes, if we find it interesting. Give your request the subject
     `REQ: xyz' if you're looking for a picture of an xyz, then in the
     message describe more exactly what you're looking for. Generally,
     the more specific you are, the more likely you are to get someone
     to draw what you want: if you just say something like `can someone
     draw me a fish' then you're not likely to get many replies,
     because people won't be sure whether or not they're wasting their
     time by drawing something you won't want. If you don't have Web
     access, mention this fact, otherwise you may get replies
     consisting only of URLs for the kind of pictures you're looking
     for.

10.  Can someone do me some cool lettering?
-------------------------------------------
    Probably not, unless we're REALLY bored. The reason for this is
    that there is a program called Figlet which does that sort of thing
    automatically -- you type in `Jane Smith', and you get back

        ___              __,
       ( /              (          o _/_ /
        / __,  _   _     `.  _ _  ,  /  /_
      _/_(_/(_/ /_(/_  (___)/ / /_(_(__/ /_
     //
    (/

    in this and a whole lot of other fonts. The ASCII text-art produced
    by Figlet can be quite stunning, so it's best to try it first
    before asking for help from the newsgroup.

    The Figlet home page is at
    http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/chai/figlet.html. This site links
    to the FTP site ftp://ftp.internexus.net/pub/figlet/, where you can
    download versions of the program for  many different platforms.

    You can run Figlet on the Web by going to one of the following sites
    and choosing your text and options on the Web page. Different sites
    offer different options (e.g. multiple fonts at once, justification,
    and limited line length). Some of these sites also provide an e-mail
    Figlet service for people with browsers which don't support forms.

    *    http://www.surfplaza.com/figlet/
    *    http://home.cern.ch/~rigaut/FigletJava.html
    *    http://schnoggo.com/figlet.html
    *    http://www.inf.utfsm.cl/cgi-bin/figlet/
    *    http://saigon.mit.edu/dinhyen/figlet/figlet.html
    *    http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/bwagner/FIGLET/figlet.pl
    *    http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~mcchau3/cgi-bin/express.html
    *    http://www.webserve.com/gateways/figletgateway.pl.
    [Shimrod, Veronica Karlsson]

    [need to check links]

    If Figlet doesn't produce the kind of results you want, THEN you
    can post to alt.ascii-art with your request. Make sure that you
    include:
    *   the fact that you have already tried Figlet, or don't have
        access to it  (otherwise you will probably just get told to use
        it)
    *   a description of the kind of lettering you want, along with any
        other symbols or logos which you would like incorporated into
        it.



11. How do I convert a picture to ASCII art?
--------------------------------------------
    There are computer programs available which convert graphics files
    of a particular format (usually GIF) to ASCII art. They go by names
    such as ascgif, gifa, gifscii, and gif2ascii. Do a Web search for
    any of these programs to find places where you can download them.
    Try:

         gopher://twinbrook.cis.uab.edu/1A/atools.70
         ftp://ftp.wwa.com/pub/Scarecrow/Gifscii/.

    However, the output from these programs is often poor (fiddling
    with the picture in an image-editing program beforehand may help).
    In this case, you can post a request to news:alt.ascii-art asking
    for someone to `asciify' it, but PLEASE DON'T POST THE PICTURE
    ITSELF. To save downloading time for people reading the messages,
    if possible give the URL (Web address) of the picture instead.

    If you saw the picture on a Web page, you can find out its URL by
    right-clicking on it (on the Macintosh, right-clicking,
    Ctrl-clicking, or holding down the mouse button) and selecting
    `Open this image' (or its equivalent for your Web browser), then
    copy the URL from the Location bar to your news program (make sure
    you copy it exactly).

    If the picture is not on a Web site anywhere, put it up on your own
    site (if you have one), or get a friend to put it up on their site,
    and post the URL to alt.ascii-art. If you can't do this, post your
    request to alt.ascii-art and wait for an artist to reply, then
    e-mail the picture to them.


12. Where do I find more ASCII art pictures and information?
------------------------------------------------------------
    There are three ASCII art Usenet groups. news:alt.ascii-art is
    the main group, where most of the discussion takes place.

    news:rec.arts.ascii is a `best-of' group, for posting the best
    ASCII art from news:alt.ascii-art. It is a moderated group -- all
    messages pass through an intermediary (the moderator) who checks
    them for appropriateness before sending them to the group itself.
    The advantage of this is that there isn't any unwanted advertising
    in the group; however, the frequency of postings to
    news:rec.arts.ascii is extremely low at the time of writing (it was
    resurrected in November 1997 after the previous moderator, Bob
    Allison (`Scarecrow') retired in December 1996).

    If your news server isn't set up to allow direct posting to
    news:rec.arts.ascii, e-mail your message to the moderator, Don
    Bertino: bertino-@-netcom-.-com (remove the dashes first).

    news:alt.ascii-art.animation is specifically for discussion and
    postings of animated ASCII art [see Question 12].
    
    Lots of ASCII artists put up libraries of their own and others'
    ASCII art on their Web sites, as well as tutorials on how to draw
    ASCII art. Allen Mullen has links to many of these sites at
    http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/2695/links.htm.

    Yahoo also has a page dedicated to ASCII art, at
    http://www.yahoo.com/Arts/Visual_Arts/Computer_Generated/ASCII_Art/.
    And try Joan Stark's Web site: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/.

    To find out how to animate ASCII art using JavaScript, see
    http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Marina/4942/faq_hta.htm and
    http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/animlesson.htm.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
[This stuff yet to be resorted from the old FAQ]


11.  What should I know about signature files?
----------------------------------------------

    A signature file (or `sig' for short; not to be confused with the
    initials added to an ASCII picture) is a small, personalized text
    file which an e-mail or news program adds to the end of every
    message a person sends -- the equivalent of a letterhead for
    dead-tree (paper) mail. Usually it contains little more than the
    person's name, organization, and e-mail address, and an
    inspirational quote of some sort; but some people like to
    incorporate ASCII art into their signature files as well.

    The biggest problem that this causes is the number of lines that
    the signature file takes up. This is a topic which, despite its
    lack of importance in relation to global warming, violence in
    society, and so on, can be the subject of heated arguments. To be
    brief, (almost) no-one will complain if your signature file is four
    lines long or fewer -- and it is quite possible to draw good ASCII
    pictures which are that small. Some examples are at:

    *   http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/~kenter/sigs.html
    *   http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/sigs.htm.

    Some e-mail programs don't allow you to have a signature file which
    is longer than four lines, while others just complain. Five or six
    lines is usually acceptable, but  any longer, and you're starting to
    take the risk that your signature will be longer than some of your
    e-mail messages; this wouldn't really make sense on paper, so it
    isn't really acceptable in cyberspace either. The exception is in
    messages posted to news:alt.ascii-art itself -- we're used to seeing
    long sigs, so we won't complain.

    But no matter what the length of your signature, make sure it's
    fewer than 72 characters wide, otherwise it may end up a horrible
    mess [see Question 6].

12. Where can I find more ASCII art?
------------------------------------


THE END


This document may be freely copied as long as Matthew Thomas is
identified as the original author.

In article <370...@spamfree.land>, Matthew Thomas
<mpt...@spamfree.land> wrote:
> 
> I'm reposting this because (1) many a.a-aers are, ad nauseum, citing
> mistakes and issues from my last draft (3.0.-1) and which I've already
> dealt with, (2) my previous posting of this newer draft (3.0.-2) doesn't
> seem to have propagated to the point where anyone has seen it, and (3)
> by dealing with a lot of the repetitive discussion here hopefully I'll
> reduce the amount of unnecessary FAQ-related discussion in the group so
> the rest of you can get on with actual pictures.
[snip]
> llizard wrote:
> >
> > Things look fine to me so far. I have only one minor point (an html
> > issue). I recently found out that for linking to a newsgroup, one must

[snip of ERRONEOUS example]


    '.             ha
      '.   _  .^%--- ha
  ______'.(_)_<  \ ha   I used pruning shears this
         (__)_/>         time to make sure it's really gone.
             __>,^
            /  |
  ejm          \


> 
> Oh No One Mustn't! That's not for *groups*, that's for *servers*.
> When you are referring to a group on a specific NNTP server, you use the
> slashes -- for example, news://news.canterbury.ac.nz/alt.ascii-art. But
> if you're referring to a widely propagated group which you can
> reasonably expect to be hosted on any NNTP server, you just put
> news:alt.ascii-art.
>
[snip]
>identified as the original author. 

Okay!! Okay!!! Okay!!!!!

           _______                |)
          /       |         ,|))  |\ /\ 
         /        |        I        /\  /\
     ___/         |       | /       \  /  | 
    /             |       |/          /__/       
   /              |_     ,>%
  (_______________|_\  \/<
  |__________________|_/  >
   )(            )( |    __>^^
   )(   ejm      )( |:  //| |

enough with embarrassment already.  I think I've got the point now. 

No, let me rephrase that:  I  |/ |\| /\ \   /
                              |\ | | \/  \^/   I've got the point now.



Matthew, you need never repost that section again.

I promise I will never ever ever EVER suggest to ANYONE that a news link
should be anything other than <A
HREF="news:alt.ascii-art">alt.ascii-art</a>

Really, I promise!  NEVER!!


    +_    +_    +_     +_    +_    +_   \   / |_|  ^  +  ') |
     C     C     C      C     C     C    \^/  | | /-\ |  !  .
   </\_  </\_  </\_   </\_  </\_  </\_
   /\    /\    /\     /\    /\    /\       |\ | [ \  / [ |)  ') ') ')
  / /|  / /|  / /|   / /|  / /|  / /|      | \| [  \/  [ |\  !  !  !

(These are supposed to be sailors from the HMS Pinafore)




NOTE: I do not pick up my mail from the idirect address. If you
are e-mailing and hit the reply button, add an "e" to "freent";
its absense is to stop the torment of automatic mailers.
--
       ___                        cq547@freene+.+oron+o.on.ca
     _/   |    ,^%---                         llizard aka ejm
    |_____|  __<_ \  Yes!  N E V E R !  (Really)
      --- ==   >/
    [_____]  __>,^          ASCII-ar+, ASCII & gif anima+ions
  ejm|   |  //| |        www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9334/

Matthew.. . I don't know if you are still around or if you have gone on
holiday :o) but here's a message anyway...

.----- On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:20:48 +1200, Matthew Thomas posted:
|=======================================================================
|This version of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the ASCII art
|Usenet groups is a development version only, and should not be archived
|or reposted. If you're new to this group, please look for a message
|posted by Martin Atkins with the subject `[FAQ] New to ascii art? Read
|me first!' and read that instead, or you may get horribly confused.
|
|Notes to regulars
|-----------------
|
|1. INTRODUCING ADA
|
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> .----- On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 12:14:51 -0500, Martin DiViaio posted:
|> |All the FAQ documents should be combined into one document. Yes, I
|> |know this makes a monster but it does put all the information in one
|> |place and gets rid of repetitive information in some documents.
|> '----------------------
|> That would be the ideal thing, but having a huge document (I feel) may
|> turn people away from taking the time to read it, defeating it's
|> object. The documents with obvious headings ('Monospaced Fonts. Text
|> Editors and ASCII Utils!' and 'Not looking right? Read this') help to
|> give newbies (for want of a better word) an obvious place to look for
|> the two most asked questions of all. This will need to be kept obvious
|> in some way.
|
|My hope is to make many of those other documents redundant by repeating
|what they say in the FAQ, without making the FAQ too long. But it would
|be quite reasonable for there to be other documents which go off into
|far more detail on specific topics -- for example, Martin's registry
|patch for Outlook Express 4, or Daniel Au's tutorial on how to start
|drawing ASCII art. It's these documents, I think, which should form what
|I hereby suggest be called the ASCII-Art Documentation Archive (ADA).
|
|What I'd like to be able to do is give a brief answer to each question
|in the FAQ, and then a couple of links to more detailed information at
|the end of each answer. For example, at the end of `I like that ASCII
|picture -- can I copy it for myself?', I'd have a link to the Copyright
|Myths FAQ. And at the end of `How do I draw my own ASCII art?', I'd link
|to a few tutorials. And so on.
'-------------------------------------
Donovan has suggested that it all be one massive document for ease of
printing, while I and others think that it should be a short document to get
people to read it --- I think we can do both.
Mattew, would it be reasonable to suggest two versions of the FAQ?

You write a short answer as you suggest above, followed by the more detailed
answer underneath exactly as you said. Then, you take out all of the 'more
detail' bits to make the short version which will then be posted to the
newsgroup. You will obv need to mark them as such and put in the short
version that more information is available, and possibly mark the revision
numbers something like 3.0a for the short version and 3.0b for the long one,
or maybe l and s would be more appropriate.. whatever.

What do you think?

.-------------------------------------
|
|4. FORMAT WARS
|
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> I feel that it is easier for all concerned to just have one copy of
|> the main FAQ in plain text format... if we have an HTML version and a
|> Text version hanging around things will be harder to keep under
|> control and keep people updated.
|
|Well, speak for yourself! I've had no problems keeping parallel HTML and
|text versions of the FAQ up-to-date over the past two years, and I will
|continue to do so. The HTML version contains hypertext links both to its
|various subsections (e.g. `see Question 4') and to external documents.
|
|As soon as this FAQ is finished, I'll e-mail Martin both versions (text
|and HTML) to put in ADA. So those people who want easy links, and can
|put up with the occasional popup, can use the HTML version; and those
|who want `just the FAQs, ma'am' can go to the text version.
|
|Everybody happy?
'-----------------------------
That is what I have done in the ADA, with the HTML version unavailable at
present and the plain text being 2.0.2 or whatever the new version I had
was?

.-----------------------------
|5. BETWEEN THE STYLE SHEETS
|
|I don't think that any mirror-specific formatting should be added
|to any of the documents. This is to help people searching the Web for
|the documents: search engines can tell if two documents are exactly the
|same, and show links to the duplicates underneath the first copy. Any
|formatting added means that the documents are no longer exact
|duplicates, so the search engines will unnecessarily show them as
|separate entries and it will be harder for people searching the Web to
|tell what is which.
'------------------------------
Well, I would have gone for this but since it is the hosts doing the hosting
I had to say that these people can add navbars and colours to the documents
if they so wish... if it wasn't for this there would probably of only been
four mirrors, three of which are mine!

.------------------------------
|A couple of years in the future, perhaps, I will include a relative link
|in the HTML version of the FAQ to an "../ada.css" which will sit in the
|parent directory of ada/ (whichever directory that happens to be for
|that mirror): that way they can apply verious styles to their copy if
|they so desire, without the actual data in the FAQ file being any
|different. Martin could distribute a default ada.css to the mirroring
|people, for those who didn't care about doing it themselves.
|
|But, as I say, that's a couple of years away yet. 
'-------------------------------
Well, the ADA has a very *minimal* CSS with it, which sorts out things like
centered headings and putting it in a sans-serif font. Hosts/Hostesses can
either rebuild this to their needs or remove it completely and go for
HTML3/Netscape-style formatting with <FONT> tags and <BODY
Blah=#???????>-type things.

.--------------------------
|Martin Atkins wrote:
|>
|> If you use CSS properly it allows you to make it look nice on 'decent'
|> browsers while making it usable on older ones, and making it almost
|> plain text (very minimal markup). Therefore I believe that that should
|> be what is used... might be just me, though.
|
|The problem is, Martin, that modern browsers don't implement CSS
|*properly* (not even Opera, although it comes close). In an ideal world
|browsers would perfectly implement the parts of CSS which they could,
|and leave the rest alone completely; but what both Netscape Navigator
|and Internet Explorer (and, to a lesser extent, Opera) do is
|*incorrectly* implement parts of CSS, which makes it almost unusable
|from a Webmaster's point of view. For now.
'---------------------------
Well, the CSS I used on the ADA I don't think has any chance of going
wrong... what can go wrong with centering <H?> tags and changing the fonts
to Sans Serif?

What hosts/hostesses add is not up to me, however.

.--------------------------
|As for me, I have style sheets, Java, Javascript, custom colors, and
|custom fonts all turned off in my browser, and I have never enjoyed Web
|surfing more ...
'--------------------------
And the ADA will still work fine for you, believe me. I tested it in IE4 by
moving the CSS out of the way temporarily, and loading it into IE2, Lynx,
Netscape 3.0 and Netscape 4 of some sort (actually a friend did that for
me). I'm confident that it will work in all browsers and I'll test it in
Opera when I next go into work ... I'm working from home at the moment :o)

.------------------------
|
|Finally, Martin, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you took the `Ten
|Commandments' and put them in a separate document.
|
'------------------------
Tis done.

.------------------------
|    
|    B.  What program are you using to view the messages?
|        * AOL [???]: --> L
|        * Eudora or Eudora Light: --> H
'---------------------

AFAIA all versions of AOL use Arial 10pt for newsgroups...

.------------------------
|    
|    D.  From the View menu, choose Options. Click on the Read tab. Set
|        the `[???]' [???] to [???]. Click Ok. Did this fix your problem?
|        * Yes: END
|        * No: --> Z
'--------------------------------

Tools menu ... options ... read tab ... press the 'Fonts...' button ...
choose a fixed-width font for *BOTH PROPORTIONAL AND FIXED WIDTH FONT*, and
press OK in the fonts window and the options window.

(The reason for having to specify a fixed width in the proportional is that
the Fixed Width option is for <PRE> and <TT> tags in HTML rich postings)

Put that in your own words :o)
    
.------------------------
|
'------------------------

Hmm why did I leave that quote box there. <g>


-Martin
|\/| _..__|_o._   /\_|_| o._  _   mart.atkins@--
|  |(_||  |_|| | /--\|_|<|| |_>            --bigfoot.com