Image to Ascii Competition (was: -Very Simple Java JPG to ASCII Converter)

Stuart Moore wrote:
> What I would find more interesting as far as image > ascii goes is a
> "competition" where several people convert the same image(s) using their
> preffered converters, to give us a full comparison of the results.

Hey, this sounds like a very good idea. What about that:
 In a first step people should suggest bitmap images for the
competition. Those images will be presented on the web and after a given
time people can vote for those images, so that there are not too many
different images. Finally people can send their contributions and they
will be made public on the competition homepage.
I think it would make sense to prescribe the size of the ascii result
(maybe in different steps like a width of 50,80,160) to make them
comparable.
What do you think about it?

> Anyone with web space willing to host something like that?

I have enough space left on my site (>10MB) and would be proud to host
it.
What about others, are there enough people interested in such kind of
competition? Any suggestions for the rules, etc.?

Markus

PS: I think it was most interesting if people would not only use those
software converters but also create or refine those images by hand.

> Hey, this sounds like a very good idea. What about that:
>  In a first step people should suggest bitmap images for the
> competition. Those images will be presented on the web and after a given
> time people can vote for those images, so that there are not too many
> different images. Finally people can send their contributions and they
> will be made public on the competition homepage.
> I think it would make sense to prescribe the size of the ascii result
> (maybe in different steps like a width of 50,80,160) to make them
> comparable.
> What do you think about it?

I love the idea !

> > Anyone with web space willing to host something like that?
>
> I have enough space left on my site (>10MB) and would be proud to host
> it.
> What about others, are there enough people interested in such kind of
> competition? Any suggestions for the rules, etc.?

Suggestions :

1) No touch ups by hand
2) People are very welcome to submit tips to get the best result with a
certian converter
3) Strict ascii -- not ansi or extended ascii
4) Converter must be freely available to artists - No internal beta's
5) People must understand that a pure conversion is not art .. because no
skill is involved - It IS however a helpful tool creating images that a
skillful artist can refine and add to - Such refining IS art.

Also it would be nice for people to discuss algorithms and techniques for
creating the best images so the in the end someone (maybe you Markus) can
create an even better converter

> Markus
>
> PS: I think it was most interesting if people would not only use those
> software converters but also create or refine those images by hand.

Me too.

Regards
CeeJay

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen wrote:
> > Hey, this sounds like a very good idea. What about that:
> >  In a first step people should suggest bitmap images for the
> > competition. Those images will be presented on the web and after a given
> > time people can vote for those images, so that there are not too many
> > different images. Finally people can send their contributions and they
[...]
> Suggestions :
> 1) No touch ups by hand
[...]
> > PS: I think it was most interesting if people would not only use those
> > software converters but also create or refine those images by hand.

I would go for conversions "without hands" too. For comparison one
could supply some just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard Ascii pictures.
Since I cannot provide a conversion algorithm I volunteer for the 
latter. That is, if the bitmap isn't to boring. As far as I know the
converters work best with high contrast and well defined "areas".
This is in opposition to the perfect motive for a drawing (line-style)
which - of course - consists of strong lines. 

:)
Andreas


                                              .---...__ ..
                                     ____    '| ASCII  `:;=-.
                                     _______ ||  ART    )| [)
       http://www.ascii-art.de  __________   `==-...___''.-.|
______________________________________________ ((o)(o)'`-(o)'__________
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""a:f

Andreas Freise wrote:
> I would go for conversions "without hands" too. For comparison one
> could supply some just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard Ascii pictures.
> [...]

What about dividing the contributions to the competition in three
categories:
 A) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
 B) Just by using a conversion algorithm and the options provided by it
 C) Conversion algorithm and refinements by hand

What about replacing some characters (up to 5?) to insert a signature? 
I think it should be allowed.

And some more suggestions for the rules:
 - The software must be freely available for everybody
 - The developer of the software is not allowed to take part in the
competition
 - 100% pure ASCII
 - The source image is not allowed to be modified (conversion of file
formats is allowed)

Regards,
Markus

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:16:43 +0200, "Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen"
<new...@CeeJay.cjb.nOt> enlightened us with:

> > Hey, this sounds like a very good idea. What about that:
> >  In a first step people should suggest bitmap images for the
> > competition. Those images will be presented on the web and after a given
> > time people can vote for those images, so that there are not too many
> > different images. Finally people can send their contributions and they
> > will be made public on the competition homepage.
> > I think it would make sense to prescribe the size of the ascii result
> > (maybe in different steps like a width of 50,80,160) to make them
> > comparable.
> > What do you think about it?
> 
> I love the idea !
> 
> > > Anyone with web space willing to host something like that?
> >
> > I have enough space left on my site (>10MB) and would be proud to host
> > it.
> > What about others, are there enough people interested in such kind of
> > competition? Any suggestions for the rules, etc.?
> 
> Suggestions :
> 
> 1) No touch ups by hand
> 2) People are very welcome to submit tips to get the best result with a
> certian converter
> 3) Strict ascii -- not ansi or extended ascii
> 4) Converter must be freely available to artists - No internal beta's
> 5) People must understand that a pure conversion is not art .. because no
> skill is involved - It IS however a helpful tool creating images that a
> skillful artist can refine and add to - Such refining IS art.
> 
> Also it would be nice for people to discuss algorithms and techniques for
> creating the best images so the in the end someone (maybe you Markus) can
> create an even better converter

Sounds fair - although I'd sugest that 4 be relaxed - perhaps there should be a
winner in the "publically available" section and also one that would include any
artist's own apps, which wouldn't have to be public domain.

I'd agree with the final point as well, although bare in mind that a good
converter for one kind of image might not work as well for the others.

If people want I can set up a CGI voting process (unless Marcus has CGI space
already) - I'd prefer not to have to deal with all the recieving of entries etc.
though.

Also, nominations for an Ascii trophy for the winner?

-- 
 o
 |\ _[]
 L_ ===    Stuart Moore
 []\, stm

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 17:20:05 +0200, Markus Gebhard <ukg...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
enlightened us with:

> Andreas Freise wrote:
> > I would go for conversions "without hands" too. For comparison one
> > could supply some just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard Ascii pictures.
> > [...]
> 
> What about dividing the contributions to the competition in three
> categories:
>  A) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
>  B) Just by using a conversion algorithm and the options provided by it
>  C) Conversion algorithm and refinements by hand
> 
> What about replacing some characters (up to 5?) to insert a signature? 
> I think it should be allowed.
> 
> And some more suggestions for the rules:
>  - The software must be freely available for everybody

Not convinced at this, see earlier post, altough if everyone else is happy then
I won't storm off in a huff...

>  - The developer of the software is not allowed to take part in the
> competition

Why? Some people might want to develop a new algorithm specially to put into the
comp, releasing it at the same time. If it's for the best algorithm, then surely
the program creators are the best people to enter them.

>  - 100% pure ASCII
>  - The source image is not allowed to be modified (conversion of file
> formats is allowed)

So everyone has the same source, the images could be available in several
formats (I'd suggest gif, jpg and png - would we need bmp too?) Otherwise lossy
compression could have a baring (unlikely, I know, but still possible).

-- 
 o
 |\ _[]
 L_ ===    Stuart Moore
 []\, stm

In article <3AC...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>,
	Markus Gebhard <ukg...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> writes:

> What about replacing some characters (up to 5?) to insert a signature? 
> I think it should be allowed.
> 
> And some more suggestions for the rules:
>  - The software must be freely available for everybody

	What about source code? Are you talking free or 'free'...

>  - The developer of the software is not allowed to take part in the
> competition

	I disagree. But perhaps only if the program is open source, and we
can all tell, that it doesn't just print out hand drawn version of the
agreed files. Maybe we should require all programs to be submitted before
the pictures are decided, and then a 3rd party can run it to ensure no
foul play.

>  - 100% pure ASCII

>  - The source image is not allowed to be modified (conversion of file
> formats is allowed)

	I guess you mean manually here. I don't see anything wrong with a
program firing up the gimp, and automatically running it through filters
and stuff.

Rob


 http://www.bath.ac.uk  __/\__              Robert Hart
       /~ab6rah/        \    /           Ground Floor Flat
                  __/\__/    \__/\__   2 Alexander Buildings
                  \                /           Bath
                  /_              _\          BA1 6AT
                    \            /
      __/\__      __/            \__      __/\__
      \    /      \                /      \    /
__/\__/    \__/\__/                \__/\__/    \__/\__

> What about dividing the contributions to the competition in three
> categories:
>  A) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
>  B) Just by using a conversion algorithm and the options provided by it
>  C) Conversion algorithm and refinements by hand

Good idea(tm)

> What about replacing some characters (up to 5?) to insert a signature?
> I think it should be allowed.

Why ? It's just conversions from a program .. not art - Allthough a signature
should be allowed for the A and C category

> And some more suggestions for the rules:
>  - The software must be freely available for everybody

Already suggested that

>  - The developer of the software is not allowed to take part in the
> competition

I don't see why not , if a developer is not satisfied with the quality of his
program he is more than welcome to improve on it (I belive that I what the
enitre contest is for .. to improve the quality of conversions)
As long as he doesn't specificly target the contest test images and optimize
the program JUST for them so it works fine with them but crap with everything
else.
But that should be easy to test for when judging the contest .. just take
another image not in the contest and try it out on that.

>  - 100% pure ASCII

Already suggested that

>  - The source image is not allowed to be modified (conversion of file
> formats is allowed)

Seems fine enough , some lossy formats might alter the picture slightly but as
conversion to ascii is already very lossy , there will be either no difference
or very little and insignificant difference in the quality of the final
product.

I have read all the contributions to this thread and have thought about
the competition. Below is a first draft of what I have in mind. It is
not complete and I am sure you have many things to complain and discuss
about.
So please tell me what you think and what should be changed. Or set up a
set of rules on your own. I hope we all will agree in the end.

Here are some annotations:
I have added a 4th category, so everybody can use any software or even
write an experimental alogrithm of his own. I have dropped the
limitation of contributions by program authors.

As already stated, I have enough web space available for the competition
homepage. Also I can set up a CGI-script to automize the voting process.
In case I do make the web space available I will not take part in the
competition and I promise not to manipulate it.
If anybody prefers to put up the competition homepage on a different
server (Stuart?) I have no problem with that and will support the
competition as good as I can.

Do we need a jury? (If so, I suggest to elect 3 persons as judges.)

Now here is my suggestion for the rules:
------------------------------------------------
The competition will take place in 5 subsequent stages:

Stage 0:
Setting up the rules. As soon as everybody agrees to them they will be
put them on the competition homepage. (Can we set up the rules by
discussing them here?)
Then dates should be fixed for stages 1 to 4.

Stage 1:
Anonymous submission of bitmap images in combination with result size
via e-mail.
 - No pornographic or illegal images (erotic images should be allowed)
 - Every image must be proposed in combination with one result size
(width) in Characters
 - Each image can be submitted several times with different combinations
of result size.
 - Image size restrictions: Maximum 640x480pixles (?)
 - Each combination of image and result size stands as a candidate for
the vote in stage 2.
 - After submission the cadidates are put on the competition homepage as
GIF or JPG (as appropriate).

Stage 2:
Voting for the candidates (the source images for the competition in
stage 3).
If there are to many submissions in stage 1 it would not make sense to
do the competition with all of them. The ASCII results should be
comparable, so I would suggest to limit the number of source images to
about 10 or so (Any idea what number is most sensible here?).
 - Every person must give his/her name and e-mail to ensure everybody
can vote only once
 - Everybody can chose a maximum of 4 (?) candidates from the suggested
image candidates.
 - At the end of stage 2 the result of the voting is put on the
competition homepage.
 - The 10 (?) images with the most votes are the candidates for the
competition in stage 3. They will be explicitly made public on the
competition homepage and they are given numbers to identify them.
Download formats will be JPG, GIF, PNG and BMP (as appropriate).

Stage 3:
Everybody can download the source candidates from stage 2, convert them
to ASCII and submit the result.
 - The result must have the width in characters that was stated together
with the source image in stage 2.
 - The result must be 100% pure ASCII (character codes  32...126).
 - The result must be submitted via the competition homepage (or mail if
there are problems) together with: Name, e-mail, a description of what
tools were used (programs, version numbers). Optional: Comments about
tricks and settings of the programs or problems with them.
 - For the submission there are 4 categories, depending on the way the
images are converted:
   A) Just by using a conversion algorithm and the options provided by
it
?     - Up to 8 (?) consecutive characters may be replaced manually for
adding a signature
     - The source image may not be midified manually (e.g. inserting
lines, changing pixels).
     - It is allowed to change the image format or to run filters over
the complete image.
     - The converter must be freely available to everybody for testing:
This means it must be freeware, software under the GPL or similar,
shareware or software with a trial period of at least a week.
   B) Conversion algorithm like in A) and refinements of the ASCII
result by hand 
   C) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
     - No conversion tools
   D) No limitations: Any software, any tricks, any image preparations
and refinements.
     - The result has to be ASCII - that's all.

 - Everybody can submit one (?) result for each combination of source
candidate and category.
 - The contributions will immediately be made public (updated daily).
? - It will be integrated into the web site as html, enclosed in <code>
and <pre>-tags. So what it will look like in the end depends on the
browser that is used for viewing the competition homepage. If there are
very large contributions an appropriate format for viewing (or
downloading as *.txt) is chosen.

Stage 4:
All the contributions are exhibited on the competition homepage. Every
person can vote for them.
 - Every person must give his name and e-mail to ensure everybody can
vote only once

??????????????????????????????????????
? Any ideas about the voting process ?
??????????????????????????????????????

At the end of stage 4 there are winners in each category. In each
category the 3 contributions with the most votes will get an Ascii
trophy (Image2ascii award 2001?). The trophy belongs to both the author
of the conversion tool (A, B, D) and the person who submitted the ASCII
result. It may be publicated on their homepage.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? Any ideas about the trophy? A nice peace of ASCII-Art?
? Any contributions to that?                           ?
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
------------------------------------------------
What do you think about it?

Markus

In article <3AC...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>,

>  - The 10 (?) images with the most votes are the candidates for the
> competition in stage 3. They will be explicitly made public on the

I'm not sure about just having a straight vote. I know it's probably
simplist, but I presume what we want is a reasonable cross-section of the
types of image, and size of output. Why not split the images up into a
number of categories, and vote for one for each. 

Maybe we should put each image in at 2 output sizes.

Rob

 http://www.bath.ac.uk  __/\__              Robert Hart
       /~ab6rah/        \    /           Ground Floor Flat
                  __/\__/    \__/\__   2 Alexander Buildings
                  \                /           Bath
                  /_              _\          BA1 6AT
                    \            /
      __/\__      __/            \__      __/\__
      \    /      \                /      \    /
__/\__/    \__/\__/                \__/\__/    \__/\__

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001 11:46:51 +0200, Markus Gebhard <ukg...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
enlightened us with:

> I have read all the contributions to this thread and have thought about
> the competition. Below is a first draft of what I have in mind. It is
> not complete and I am sure you have many things to complain and discuss
> about.
> So please tell me what you think and what should be changed. Or set up a
> set of rules on your own. I hope we all will agree in the end.
> 
> Here are some annotations:
> I have added a 4th category, so everybody can use any software or even
> write an experimental alogrithm of his own. I have dropped the
> limitation of contributions by program authors.
> 
> As already stated, I have enough web space available for the competition
> homepage. Also I can set up a CGI-script to automize the voting process.
> In case I do make the web space available I will not take part in the
> competition and I promise not to manipulate it.
> If anybody prefers to put up the competition homepage on a different
> server (Stuart?) I have no problem with that and will support the
> competition as good as I can.

Depends on the timescale, my time will be limited over the next few months which
probably rules me out of doing too much image collection, although I may be able
to get something together for image submission & voting. I already have a file
upload script that can probably be adapted to what we need. I think that it'd be
a shame if you couldn't submit jave - after all, it was you hyping on about it
that prompted this ;-)

> 
> Do we need a jury? (If so, I suggest to elect 3 persons as judges.)
> 

If you mean someone impartial to agree for disputes, then I'm sure some suitable
lurkers can come out of the woodwork for this.

> Stage 2:
> Voting for the candidates (the source images for the competition in
> stage 3).
> If there are to many submissions in stage 1 it would not make sense to
> do the competition with all of them. The ASCII results should be
> comparable, so I would suggest to limit the number of source images to
> about 10 or so (Any idea what number is most sensible here?).
>  - Every person must give his/her name and e-mail to ensure everybody
> can vote only once
>  - Everybody can chose a maximum of 4 (?) candidates from the suggested
> image candidates.
>  - At the end of stage 2 the result of the voting is put on the
> competition homepage.
>  - The 10 (?) images with the most votes are the candidates for the
> competition in stage 3. They will be explicitly made public on the
> competition homepage and they are given numbers to identify them.
> Download formats will be JPG, GIF, PNG and BMP (as appropriate).

The decision process might work better as a discussion here, perhaps with a vote
on the newsgroup at the end. That way we can ensure that we agree on a fair mix
of images, e.g. I'd like to see at least one grayscale, some photos and some
pop-art like images.

> 
> Stage 3:
> Everybody can download the source candidates from stage 2, convert them
> to ASCII and submit the result.
>  - The result must have the width in characters that was stated together
> with the source image in stage 2.
>  - The result must be 100% pure ASCII (character codes  32...126).
>  - The result must be submitted via the competition homepage (or mail if
> there are problems) together with: Name, e-mail, a description of what
> tools were used (programs, version numbers). Optional: Comments about
> tricks and settings of the programs or problems with them.
>  - For the submission there are 4 categories, depending on the way the
> images are converted:
>    A) Just by using a conversion algorithm and the options provided by
> it
> ?     - Up to 8 (?) consecutive characters may be replaced manually for
> adding a signature
>      - The source image may not be midified manually (e.g. inserting
> lines, changing pixels).
>      - It is allowed to change the image format or to run filters over
> the complete image.
>      - The converter must be freely available to everybody for testing:
> This means it must be freeware, software under the GPL or similar,
> shareware or software with a trial period of at least a week.
>    B) Conversion algorithm like in A) and refinements of the ASCII
> result by hand 
>    C) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
>      - No conversion tools
>    D) No limitations: Any software, any tricks, any image preparations
> and refinements.
>      - The result has to be ASCII - that's all.

Why not define on each image where the sig should be (e.g. bottom right corner)
so that everything else is fair comparison?

Also, how about another category for Coloured ASCII (e.g. with HTML) as this
could be quite effective. 

> 
>  - Everybody can submit one (?) result for each combination of source
> candidate and category.
>  - The contributions will immediately be made public (updated daily).
> ? - It will be integrated into the web site as html, enclosed in <code>
> and <pre>-tags. So what it will look like in the end depends on the
> browser that is used for viewing the competition homepage. If there are
> very large contributions an appropriate format for viewing (or
> downloading as *.txt) is chosen.

As I said, I can probably put together a script that'll recieve entries as TXT
files, and display them next to the original image.

> 
> Stage 4:
> All the contributions are exhibited on the competition homepage. Every
> person can vote for them.
>  - Every person must give his name and e-mail to ensure everybody can
> vote only once
> 

Fine, although anyone who wanted to would be able to get extra emails anyway to
fake it. I think everyone'll have to be on their honour...

> ??????????????????????????????????????
> ? Any ideas about the voting process ?
> ??????????????????????????????????????
> 
> At the end of stage 4 there are winners in each category. In each
> category the 3 contributions with the most votes will get an Ascii
> trophy (Image2ascii award 2001?). The trophy belongs to both the author
> of the conversion tool (A, B, D) and the person who submitted the ASCII
> result. It may be publicated on their homepage.
> 


Also, perhaps winners within image categories etc. - e.g. if there was one
converter that did photos really well, another that was good for bold colour
changes, another for subtle details etc.

We can make them up as we go along, once we know what people are doing and how
varied the results are.

-- 
 o
 |\ _[]
 L_ ===    Stuart Moore
 []\, stm

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Markus Gebhard wrote:
> And some more suggestions for the rules:
>  - The software must be freely available for everybody
>  - The developer of the software is not allowed to take part in the
> competition

Um, I think that the developer would be the best to join the competition. 
When the converter is available to other people than one can easily check
if the result was possible with that program afterwards.

>  - 100% pure ASCII
>  - The source image is not allowed to be modified (conversion of file
> formats is allowed)

Well, that's in favour of Jave of course. Other people have to modify it
before - at least contrast and such things. In my opinion the modified
picture should be shown as well but without modification most converters 
don't make sense.

:)
Andreas

                                                                      
                                                     .. -._     ._.--.
                                              _.. - '   ,   `.- '     
                                    .-- ~- '    (        )            
                                   (,--   --._.'-. .--._      (   .-  
                                  .n__.-:_,---.         `--._.'`-'    
________________________________ /_oo=oO_  c-c'____________________a:f
http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~freise        http://www.ascii-art.de
                                                                      

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Markus Gebhard wrote:
[...]
> So please tell me what you think and what should be changed. Or set up a
> set of rules on your own. I hope we all will agree in the end.
[...]

> Stage 3:
> Everybody can download the source candidates from stage 2, convert them
> to ASCII and submit the result.

I would suggest to submit the "filtered" bitmap as well. It's not only the
algorithm what is tested here but the user and so one might learn from the
filtering effect used by other people.

>    C) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
>      - No conversion tools

And no limits! I think that any limit in size or even form makes no sense 
here. I _would_ do a drawing of the motive but to try a technical copy of
the bitmap is definately too boring.

> What do you think about it?

Well, go ahead. Someone has to start it and then hopefully some more 
people join in. I am definately very much interested in the result of 
that contest.

:)
Andreas
______________________________________________ http://www.ascii-art.de
                                                                      

Andreas Freise wrote:
> Um, I think that the developer would be the best to join the competition.
> When the converter is available to other people than one can easily check
> if the result was possible with that program afterwards.

You are right and as you can see I dropped that limitation in the set of
rules I recently submitted.

> >  - The source image is not allowed to be modified (conversion of file
> > formats is allowed)
> 
> Well, that's in favour of Jave of course.

That's right, but that was not my intention. I just wanted to ensure
that everybody has the same picture and does not insert lines by hand
etc. I did not think about image filters at first, and of course they
are very important for most converters (even for Jave) if you want to
get a really good result.
Again: I've already dropped this limitation.

Markus

R A Hart wrote:
> >  - The 10 (?) images with the most votes are the candidates for the
> > competition in stage 3. They will be explicitly made public on the
> 
> I'm not sure about just having a straight vote. I know it's probably
> simplist, but I presume what we want is a reasonable cross-section of the
> types of image, and size of output. Why not split the images up into a
> number of categories, and vote for one for each.

What about this: We divide the images in categories like greyscale,
portrait, etc. _after_ the image suggestions process. Then we can vote
for them one or two for each category.

> Maybe we should put each image in at 2 output sizes.

That's alright by me.

Markus

Stuart Moore wrote:
> > If anybody prefers to put up the competition homepage on a different
> > server (Stuart?) I have no problem with that and will support the
> > competition as good as I can.
> 
> ... although I may be able
> to get something together for image submission & voting. I already have a file
> upload script that can probably be adapted to what we need. ...

Ok. Can you start building a competition homepage and set up the upload
process? I think we should start the image suggestion process soon, so
we can see what categories there are and to make plans about how to go
on.

> If you mean someone impartial to agree for disputes, then I'm sure some suitable
> lurkers can come out of the woodwork for this.

That's ok, but we should have settled a judge before we have a quarrel
(although I do not think we will have any). Any volunteers?

> >  - The 10 (?) images with the most votes are the candidates for the
> > competition in stage 3. They will be explicitly made public on the
> > competition homepage and they are given numbers to identify them.
> > Download formats will be JPG, GIF, PNG and BMP (as appropriate).
> 
> The decision process might work better as a discussion here, perhaps with a vote
> on the newsgroup at the end. That way we can ensure that we agree on a fair mix
> of images, e.g. I'd like to see at least one grayscale, some photos and some
> pop-art like images.

A fair mix of images can be asured by division into categories. We can
discuss the categories on the newsgroup, but the vote should take place
on the homepage (or via mail).

> Why not define on each image where the sig should be (e.g. bottom right corner)
> so that everything else is fair comparison?

I would leave that decission to the artist. I think it will not make too
much difference and maybe there are some clever ideas about how to
integrate the sig.

> Also, how about another category for Coloured ASCII (e.g. with HTML) as this
> could be quite effective.

That's ok by me.

> >  - Every person must give his name and e-mail to ensure everybody can
> > vote only once
> 
> Fine, although anyone who wanted to would be able to get extra emails anyway to
> fake it. I think everyone'll have to be on their honour...

By collecting name and email we can at least ensure that nobody hits the
submit button in his browser several times. Of course we will not be
able to handle any kind of manipulation.

> Also, perhaps winners within image categories etc. - e.g. if there was one
> converter that did photos really well, another that was good for bold colour
> changes, another for subtle details etc.

We should not end up with too many winners. But it surely would make
sense to split up to categories. What about only having a first position
in each category and not taking care about second and third? Up to now
we seem to have 5 categories for the conversion and I expect at least 5
categories for the images. This makes 25 winners in the end seems to be
quite fair considering that each converting tool has special benefits
for one or the other category.

Markus

Andreas Freise wrote:

> I would suggest to submit the "filtered" bitmap as well. It's not only the
> algorithm what is tested here but the user and so one might learn from the
> filtering effect used by other people.

Sounds like a good idea to me. On the other hand we should not forget
about the size of the competition homepage. I don't know how many
submissions we have to expect. 

> >    C) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
> >      - No conversion tools
> 
> And no limits! I think that any limit in size or even form makes no sense
> here. I _would_ do a drawing of the motive but to try a technical copy of
> the bitmap is definately too boring.

Hm, I guess you are right about that. Although on the other hand I would
be very interested in the comparison of the results in different
conversion categories. So I would like to see what ascii artists do by
hand compared in difference to a converter...

What about that:
  C) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
    - No conversion tools
    - Here the result size of the source candidate is only an advice,
      but the size of the result should not differ too much (+-60%?).

> Well, go ahead. Someone has to start it and then hopefully some more
> people join in. I am definately very much interested in the result of
> that contest.

So am I. :)

Markus

Markus Gebhard, am Thu, 29 Mar 2001 18:43:30 +0200

<snip>
>What about that:
>  C) just-with-my-hands-and-keyboard
>    - No conversion tools
>    - Here the result size of the source candidate is only an advice,
>      but the size of the result should not differ too much (+-60%?).
>> Well, go ahead. Someone has to start it and then hopefully some more
>> people join in. I am definately very much interested in the result of
>> that contest.
>So am I. :)

[X] Add me ;)

Ma�ion, interested

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