[DIS] Hello Sailors!

Hello everybody! I'm new here.

I like ASCII art! I have my own MUD now, at
"telnet://nerd42.is-a-geek.net:4242" that will use alot of it. (my MUD
is still in the "coming soon" stages, it isn't up all the time just
yet) This group might be very helpful. Is it okay to just use any
ASCII art i find here? Is there anybody stupid enough to try to
copyright ASCII art? And why does windows not show all the ASCII
characters?

On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 17:34:59 +0000 (UTC), ner...@msn.com (Nerd42) wrote:

> I like ASCII art! I have my own MUD now, at
> "telnet://nerd42.is-a-geek.net:4242" that will use alot of it. (my MUD
> is still in the "coming soon" stages, it isn't up all the time just
> yet) This group might be very helpful. Is it okay to just use any
> ASCII art i find here?

Yes. No. It depends.

Read the alt.ascii-art FAQ (at http://xrl.us/du9 , for example, which is
a short link to Google Groups's version of
news:hxS...@shieldwolf.demon.co.uk ); in particular, for this
question, section 10 "Can I copy or post that ASCII picture for
myself?".

Briefly: you can often use the picture as long as you make no money off
it and as long as you keep the author's initials, if any. But do read
the full story in the FAQ.

(See also the ASCII Art FAQ ten commandments.)

> Is there anybody stupid enough to try to copyright ASCII art?

It's not stupid. It *is* art, and it *does* take time and talent. It's
worth being copyrighted.

> And why does windows not show all the ASCII characters?

Windows *does* show all ASCII characters. Maybe your opinion of what's
an ASCII character is different from ours? See section 3 of the
above-mentioned FAQ.

Printable ASCII characters have codes from 32 to 126, inclusive (space
to tilde). 0-31 and 127 are control characters and not printable;
characters with codes above 127 are not ASCII. This includes characters
such as � or ' -- they're not ASCII.

Please read the FAQ!

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <nos...@gmx.li>
That really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Philip Newton <pn...@spamcop.net> writes:
>> Is there anybody stupid enough to try to copyright ASCII art?
> It's not stupid. It *is* art, and it *does* take time and talent. It's
> worth being copyrighted.

Actually, under the Berne Convention, which most western nations have
signed, you don't have to do anything at all, it's automatically
copyrighted, whether it says so or not, and remains so unless explicitly
released by the creator to the public domain.

Also, your comment that so long as you don't make any money off it is
not entirely correct.  Monetary damages are a significant factor in
awarding claims in copyright cases, but you are still required to have
the permission of the copyright holder even if you are not using it for
commercial purposes and they can take legal action against you if you do
not.  In practice, I agree that it is unlikely any ASCII artist would do
such a thing unless significant money were involved.

Brian.

I've looked at alot of the art on here. It's alot.... bigger than I
thought. I mean, I've always created smaller things like:
__   _  _   _ ___   __   _  _   _     _
| \ / \ |\  |' |    | \ / \ |\  | |  / \ |
| | | | | \ |  |    |_/ |_| | \ | | |    |
|_/ \_/ |  \|  |    |   | | |  \| |  \_/ .

And stolen smaller things like:
___                        ___
\  |----------------------|  /
/__|  Message of the Day  |__\
   '----------------------'
Words and signs mostly is what i'm interested in getting/making I
think.

About ASCII in windows: I meant the fancy ASCII characters like you
see in the DOS QBASIC help file, in windows they appear as "U"s and
"a"s with "^"s and things over them, but in DOS, they look like, well,
they're supposed to.

About the FAQ: I will read it before I post again to anywhere but here
in this thread, because I haven't the time at present.

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 01:07:31 +0000 (UTC), ner...@msn.com (Nerd42) wrote:

> About ASCII in windows: I meant the fancy ASCII characters like you
> see in the DOS QBASIC help file, in windows they appear as "U"s and
> "a"s with "^"s and things over them, but in DOS, they look like, well,
> they're supposed to.

What you call "fancy ASCII characters" are not part of ASCII.

(One consequence of this is that art containing those characters is not
"ASCII art". Another is that such art is not portable between machines
-- as you saw, it looks different under Windows; other machines,
especially using "non-English" fonts, will show even more different
characters. Even under DOS there are differences, for example between
code page 437 [the original] and 850 [commonly used in Europe], which
does not have corners where double and single lines meet, for example.)

Try to restrict yourself to ASCII when creating ASCII art.

(On the other hand, if you're creating ANSI art, it may work if you use
non-ASCII characters -- though support for ANSI escape sequences does
not imply a specific font.)

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <nos...@gmx.li>
That really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

> Try to restrict yourself to ASCII when creating ASCII art.

You mean for here, right? I can do whatever I want in my own DOS programs.

On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 17:44:20 +0000 (UTC), ner...@msn.com (Nerd42) wrote:

> > Try to restrict yourself to ASCII when creating ASCII art.
> 
> You mean for here, right? I can do whatever I want in my own DOS
> programs.

Indeed you can. But the result will not be "ASCII art" if it contains
characters that are not part of the ASCII.

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <nos...@gmx.li>
That really is my address; no need to remove anything to reply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Ah.