Which converter was used?

For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg

-- 
%.  _    /)    That's why I didn't kill myself sooner, the pressure
`%-('`._/ ) _  of spelling mistakes. -"5 Suicide Notes" by Saracen Tate
 `\ \     `'/  Maija Haavisto * DiamonDie @ IRCnet&Undernet
     `.___.'mh http://www.angelfire.com/mn/Maija/

Maija Haavisto wrote:
> For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
> this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg

It's hard to say, but the aspect seems ok (hard to tell without the 
original picture) so it's likely not one of the really old convertors 
because they all made this error.

Also the image seems to have inverted brightness which not all 
convertors can do .. but this could be done in a imageeditor.

The algorithm used seems to convert an area to chars depending on only 
the shade of the area and does not take into account the shape of the 
char it converts too.

The choice of chars that it coverts to seem to be poorly choosen as some 
have shapes that could distract from the overall look.

It's not one of JavE's shading presets so I do not think that this was 
done with JavE .. but rather with a simpler less sophisticated convertor.

The use of M's as a black char and the fact that it's in a .jpg format 
now and not in ascii might suggest that it was done with ATI's Catalyst 
drivers and the special Ascii-art shader .. but still it's is not in a 
4:3 format as you would expect from a screenshot so this makes it unlikely.

It could ofcourse be a crop of a larger image , so it's not impossible.

Other than that I really can't say.

Kind Regards
CeeJay

_.-In alt.ascii-art, Maija Haavisto wrote the following -._
> For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
> this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg
Looks like a aalib variant to me.  
<url:http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib>

-- 
  .-'))  http://asciipr0n.com/fp   ('-.  | It's a damn poor mind that
 ' ..-  .:" )               ( ":.  -.. ' | can only think of one way to
  ((,,_;'.;'   UIN=66618055  ';. ';_,,)) | spell a word.
        ((_.YIM=Faux_Pseudo :._))        | - Andrew Jackson

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 23:16:01 +0100, Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen <new...@ceejay.cjb.REMOVEnet> kirjoitti:
> Maija Haavisto wrote:
> > For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
> > this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg
> 
> It's hard to say, but the aspect seems ok (hard to tell without the 
> original picture) so it's likely not one of the really old convertors 
> because they all made this error.
> 
> Also the image seems to have inverted brightness which not all 
> convertors can do .. but this could be done in a imageeditor.
> 
> The algorithm used seems to convert an area to chars depending on only 
> the shade of the area and does not take into account the shape of the 
> char it converts too.
> 
> The choice of chars that it coverts to seem to be poorly choosen as some 
> have shapes that could distract from the overall look.
> 
> It's not one of JavE's shading presets so I do not think that this was 
> done with JavE .. but rather with a simpler less sophisticated convertor.
> 
> The use of M's as a black char and the fact that it's in a .jpg format 
> now and not in ascii might suggest that it was done with ATI's Catalyst 
> drivers and the special Ascii-art shader .. but still it's is not in a 
> 4:3 format as you would expect from a screenshot so this makes it unlikely.
> 
> It could ofcourse be a crop of a larger image , so it's not impossible.
> 
> Other than that I really can't say.

Thanks for your long and detailed reply, even if it didn't answer the question.
I think I've seen several images converted with this same algorithm - decent
"shading" but the edges use weird characters like ; and there's no antialiasing.
I doubt it's done with ATI's gfx card drivers. The image is in JPG format
because it was submitted to a gfx site.

-- 
%.  _    /)    That's why I didn't kill myself sooner, the pressure
`%-('`._/ ) _  of spelling mistakes. -"5 Suicide Notes" by Saracen Tate
 `\ \     `'/  Maija Haavisto * DiamonDie @ IRCnet&Undernet
     `.___.'mh http://www.angelfire.com/mn/Maija/

Maija Haavisto <mai...@dontspambut.writeme.com> kirjoitti 01.03.2004:
> For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
> this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg

It does _not_ look like aalib, gifscii, pbmtoascii or Rob Harley's
original algorithm -- the character set does not match any of those.

My best attempt at reconstructing the character gradient in that image
is " ,.;:iraX2S7Z08BW@M" (sans double quotes).  The precise order of
the characters there could be wrong (although I've tried to base it on
gradients in the image rather than visual appearance) but I'm fairly
sure those are the only characters used.

I think the program in question might be ASCII Generator, found at
<http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~wardog/>.  The sample picture and
gradient bars found on that page certainly look similar.  However,
running strings(1) on the executable reveals a somewhat different
character table, " .,:;rsiS52X39hG&AHBM#@".

Some of the differences could be due to mistakes in my reconstruction,
but the absence of some characters found in the image from the table
is a problem.  It could, however, be that the image has been created
by some earlier version of the program.  In any case, ASCII Generator
was the closest match I could find among the converters listed in the
Open Directory Project's ASCII Art Software category, although I may
have missed some.

-- 
Ilmari Karonen
If replying by e-mail, please replace ".invalid" with ".net" in address.

Faux_Pseudo wrote:
> _.-In alt.ascii-art, Maija Haavisto wrote the following -._
> 
>>For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
>>this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg
> 
> Looks like a aalib variant to me.  
> <url:http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib>

That could very well be.

Tue, 2 Mar 2004 04:20:01 +0200, Ilmari Karonen <use...@vyznev.invalid> kirjoitti:
> Maija Haavisto <mai...@dontspambut.writeme.com> kirjoitti 01.03.2004:
> > For people who are more familiar with ASCII converters, which one was
> > this picture made with? http://maija.irtie.org/ascii.jpg
> 
> It does _not_ look like aalib, gifscii, pbmtoascii or Rob Harley's
> original algorithm -- the character set does not match any of those.
> 
> My best attempt at reconstructing the character gradient in that image
> is " ,.;:iraX2S7Z08BW@M" (sans double quotes).  The precise order of
> the characters there could be wrong (although I've tried to base it on
> gradients in the image rather than visual appearance) but I'm fairly
> sure those are the only characters used.
> 
> I think the program in question might be ASCII Generator, found at
> <http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~wardog/>.  The sample picture and
> gradient bars found on that page certainly look similar.  However,
> running strings(1) on the executable reveals a somewhat different
> character table, " .,:;rsiS52X39hG&AHBM#@".
> 
> Some of the differences could be due to mistakes in my reconstruction,
> but the absence of some characters found in the image from the table
> is a problem.  It could, however, be that the image has been created
> by some earlier version of the program.  In any case, ASCII Generator
> was the closest match I could find among the converters listed in the
> Open Directory Project's ASCII Art Software category, although I may
> have missed some.

Thanks for your help. I think it must be another program then, surely
the directory doesn't contain all of them. There are dozens of ASCII
converters around, many people don't even realize they exists so they
code their own. The similarities with ASCII Generator might be totally
random, there aren't _that_ many possible ways of converting pictures
anyway. Just have to keep searching.

-- 
%.  _    /)    That's why I didn't kill myself sooner, the pressure
`%-('`._/ ) _  of spelling mistakes. -"5 Suicide Notes" by Saracen Tate
 `\ \     `'/  Maija Haavisto * DiamonDie @ IRCnet&Undernet
     `.___.'mh http://www.angelfire.com/mn/Maija/