ascii art for email and much more! (was: Copyright Notice, blah blah blah)

Ha ha ha! Veronicastein, feel free to draw the gun first at any time, all
of these issues are not really conditioned by time measured in days or
weeks anyway. 

On the issue itself (ascii art is created for email distribution), I think
that email is not really a reliable reference, since it is a moving target.
Not because of attachments, but because of email content itself. For
example, Netscape Mail allows for a limited degree of styled text within
the email content itself (i.e. the same kind of styled/formatted text that
you can achieve with html tags.) That's already a reality today, and it
won't be long, before email clients (email software) can display gifs,
animations, etc directly within the body of the email text. 

In other words, email pages will look like web pages.

Will it be the end of ascii art as we know it today? I don't think so, I
think that ascii art as we know it today will be around for decades to
come. But yes, I do think that enhancements of ascii art will naturally
develop as the transmission capabilities of email continuously improve. I
would not be surprised at all, if in response to this article, someone
points out a  way how to embed an animated gif within the body of Netscape
Mail or something like that.

On a different, yet related issue, why not pool all global resources in
this alt.ascii-art newsgroup? There are only one or two dozen contributors
who keep this newsgroup alive, and I consider it a bad idea to scatter
these few resources amongst several newsgroups/mailing lists. 

rec.arts.ascii died, alt.ascii-art.animation is dying, the only ascii art
mailing list extant is not very active, etc etc. In other words, the
reality is that we can not sustain those newsgroups/mailing lists with the
few resources that we have globally. Rather than scattering resources even
further, we better adopt a "united we stand ..." kind of attitude for what
is, realistically speaking, a pretty small subculture.

In turn, this will require us to give a home to the many variants,
enhancements and further developments of ascii art in this newsgroup. And
why not? The more, the merrier!

   ,,
  ( ">
 ,(->)->  http://members.aol.com/petecasso
(  ^^
 Frogstein and Birdstein (ascii art comic strips)
  Jump, Frogstein, Jump! (animated cartoons)
   Style, Birdstein, Style! (Text Art Plus)
    Fly, Birdstein, Fly! (Animated Text Art Plus)

Again ignoring the emotional BS in this and other threads for the moment.
Good, Veronicastein, you demonstrated what I said, email can transmit more
than just pure ascii!

So why do you have such a big hangup against developing ascii further,
commensurate with the transmission capabilities of email/newsgroup/web? Is
the hangup just because of the words in a standard that originated in
pre-Internet days? 

Or are there any chances for a more open mind towards progress based on
that old standard?

   ,,
  ( ">
 ,(->)->  http://members.aol.com/petecasso
(  ^^
 Frogstein and Birdstein (ascii art comic strips)
  Jump, Frogstein, Jump! (animated cartoons)
   Style, Birdstein, Style! (Text Art Plus)
    Fly, Birdstein, Fly! (Animated Text Art Plus)

In article <199...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
pet...@aol.com (PeteCasso) writes:
>So why do you have such a big hangup against developing ascii further,
>commensurate with the transmission capabilities of email/newsgroup/web? Is
>the hangup just because of the words in a standard that originated in
>pre-Internet days? 

Oh, where is Dan Strychalski?  ASCII is ASCII--  if you develop ASCII any
further, it is no longer ASCII.  The beauty of ASCII art is its simplicity and
it's ability to work on all computer systems. 

When you start adding html, gifs, jpgs, animation, and the like, it is no
longer ASCII at it's finest.  Period.
-joan
-- 
            _____          /|
         .-'@ & #`'-.     //              joan stark
        / %        8 \   //            <spu...@juno.com>    
       | m   () _     | //
        \  0   ( '-._/ //      SEE MY PERSONAL ASCII ART GALLERY:
  jgs    '-.____'.     y       http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/

In article <199...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, 
PeteCasso <pet...@aol.com> writes:
>Again ignoring the emotional BS in this and other threads for the moment.
>Good, Veronicastein, you demonstrated what I said, email can transmit more
>than just pure ascii!

  I just want you to know that, on reading this newsgroup, I click
  open each article and basically if I don't see a picture immediately
  flick "next".  I'm sure a lot of other people do exactly the same.
  OB picture:
-- 

I hate you  you hate me                     .      .              .""""O'._
                                             ) || (             .'         :
let's hang Barnie from a tree               '  ::  '           ;         .==
                                               ::    >>>=======)        :
   with an arrow in his back                   ::         .'           :
                                               ;;       .'             :
   chop his head off with an axe                       :     (    |   :
                                                      :       \   |  :
now from the purple worm we're free                 .'        |   ).'
                                                _.-'      _..-|   |
                                            _.-~       _.~    |   |
(alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die)       _.-~   __...--~      /_.'. '._
                                        ~~~~'''                    ~~~ 

Hey! PC! You didn't even have to go out and find a course in computer 
science, it came to you! :D

(and it is one of the prettiest computer courses I have ever seen :)

Bo Elovson Grey wrote:
> 
[ 8< ]
> |Ok, let's have another go at that beloved ASCII-topic. Let's get technical.
> |ALL the characters in the ASCII-standard are those you can see on that
> |nifty table VK posts now and then.

The "nifty table" was originally something I copied from the depths of the
unix system here at my school:

     |  0 NUL|  1 SOH|  2 STX|  3 ETX|  4 EOT|  5 ENQ|  6 ACK|  7 BEL|
     |  8 BS |  9 HT | 10 NL | 11 VT | 12 NP | 13 CR | 14 SO | 15 SI |
     | 16 DLE| 17 DC1| 18 DC2| 19 DC3| 20 DC4| 21 NAK| 22 SYN| 23 ETB|
     | 24 CAN| 25 EM | 26 SUB| 27 ESC| 28 FS | 29 GS | 30 RS | 31 US |
     | 32 SP | 33  ! | 34  " | 35  # | 36  $ | 37  % | 38  & | 39  ' |
     | 40  ( | 41  ) | 42  * | 43  + | 44  , | 45  - | 46  . | 47  / |
     | 48  0 | 49  1 | 50  2 | 51  3 | 52  4 | 53  5 | 54  6 | 55  7 |
     | 56  8 | 57  9 | 58  : | 59  ; | 60  < | 61  = | 62  > | 63  ? |
     | 64  @ | 65  A | 66  B | 67  C | 68  D | 69  E | 70  F | 71  G |
     | 72  H | 73  I | 74  J | 75  K | 76  L | 77  M | 78  N | 79  O |
     | 80  P | 81  Q | 82  R | 83  S | 84  T | 85  U | 86  V | 87  W |
     | 88  X | 89  Y | 90  Z | 91  [ | 92  \ | 93  ] | 94  ^ | 95  _ |
     | 96  ` | 97  a | 98  b | 99  c |100  d |101  e |102  f |103  g |
     |104  h |105  i |106  j |107  k |108  l |109  m |110  n |111  o |
     |112  p |113  q |114  r |115  s |116  t |117  u |118  v |119  w |
     |120  x |121  y |122  z |123  { |124  | |125  } |126  ~ |127 DEL|

which llizard then improved a little with special thought to be used in 
ascii art:


 ===================================================================
 }|  No, no, no, MUSTN'T use these:                               |{
 }|                                                               |{
 }|  0 NUL|  1 SOH|  2 STX|  3 ETX|  4 EOT|  5 ENQ|  6 ACK|  7 BEL|{
 }|  8 BS |  9 HT | 10 NL | 11 VT | 12 NP | 13 CR | 14 SO | 15 SI |{
 }| 16 DLE| 17 DC1| 18 DC2| 19 DC3| 20 DC4| 21 NAK| 22 SYN| 23 ETB|{
 }| 24 CAN| 25 EM | 26 SUB| 27 ESC| 28 FS | 29 GS | 30 RS | 31 US |{
 }|       |                                                       |{
 }|---------------------------------------------------------------|{
 }| Yes, yes, yes, MUST use these:                                |{
 }|                                                               |{
 }| 32 SP | 33  ! | 34  " | 35  # | 36  $ | 37  % | 38  & | 39  ' |{
 }| 40  ( | 41  ) | 42  * | 43  + | 44  , | 45  - | 46  . | 47  / |{
 }| 48  0 | 49  1 | 50  2 | 51  3 | 52  4 | 53  5 | 54  6 | 55  7 |{
 }| 56  8 | 57  9 | 58  : | 59  ; | 60  < | 61  = | 62  > | 63  ? |{
 }| 64  @ | 65  A | 66  B | 67  C | 68  D | 69  E | 70  F | 71  G |{
 }| 72  H | 73  I | 74  J | 75  K | 76  L | 77  M | 78  N | 79  O |{
 }| 80  P | 81  Q | 82  R | 83  S | 84  T | 85  U | 86  V | 87  W |{
 }| 88  X | 89  Y | 90  Z | 91  [ | 92  \ | 93  ] | 94  ^ | 95  _ |{
 }| 96  ` | 97  a | 98  b | 99  c |100  d |101  e |102  f |103  g |{
 }|104  h |105  i |106  j |107  k |108  l |109  m |110  n |111  o |{
 }|112  p |113  q |114  r |115  s |116  t |117  u |118  v |119  w |{
 }|120  x |121  y |122  z |123  { |124  | |125  } |126  ~ |       |{
 }|---------------------------------------------------------------|{
 }| No, no, no, MUST'NT use this one either:                      |{
 }|                                                       |127 DEL|{
 ===================================================================


> | Each character has its own 7-bit code.
> |What the computer sees when it reads an ASCII-picture is a bunch of 7-bit
> |binary numbers. So, when the computer reads 1100001 (97) it writes an 'a'
> |with its standard- or selected font. Neither coordinates nor size are given
> |. It just says 'a'. (I made the example on the fly, please correct me if I
> |got the numbers wrong).

The numbers look right to me :)

> | If the file for example contains pixeldata, like a
> |GIF image, or formatting and colourdata, like HTML, it isn't an ASCII no
> |matter how many 'true' characters you use. The only way to develop ASCII
> |further is to change the standard to, let's say an 8-bit (or better still
> |16-bit or 32-bit or...) character-table. However, the ASCII-table is only
> |7-bit (128 different combos). That's the hard facts of life. Anything else
> |is character art or art that happens to contain characters. Keep on
> |developing character art! I like to watch it, on a WEBPAGE! /\
> |___________________________________________________________/  \

(I wonder how much PC understands of computers... you might be talking over
his head here...)

>                                                                 \_________.
>                                                                           |
>                                      \|||/                                |
> ,____________________________________('o`)________________________________|
> |I don't like html in either e-mail or news.  Please don't use html in your
> |news articles. Why? My news-reader, Knews, doesn't handle html and looking
> |at html in Pine doesn't make me happier.

I get an ugly error message if I try to do that...

> | The reason I, and many others,
> |use those programs is that they're stunningly quick.

I fear PC thinks a PC is "stunningly quick"... :(

[ 8< ]
> |_________________________________________________________________________
>                                 |
>                                 |
>                                \|/
>                                -*-
>                                /|\ (Det var den fulaste spindel jag sett!)
> 

("spindel"? Var d�? ;)

[ 8< ]

-- 
:)
Veronica Karlsson
( e93...@sm.luth.se  http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/ )

In article <340...@nospam.sm.luth.se>,
	Veronica Karlsson <e93...@nospam.sm.luth.se> writes:
>It's a very nice "standard", what I like about it is its simplicity, the
>way it is viewable for everybody, the compactness of the pictures
>compared to other image formats and also the challenge in making good
>looking pictures with a very limited set of characters. 

By the way, did anyone ever try to view ascii-art in a VERY small font ?
Most of it just looks great !

	Curd

--
 Curd Reinert
 ecreinerKLAMMERAFFEinformatikPUNKTuniBINDESTRICHosnabrueckPUNKTde
 Fingerabdruck:   93 11 4E 48 90 1D 51 5D  7E EA C1 81 BE 58 7E FD

PeteCasso wrote:
> 
> Again ignoring the emotional BS in this and other threads for the moment.
> Good, Veronicastein, you demonstrated what I said, email can transmit more
> than just pure ascii!
> 

I meant that post as a deterring example.... I definitely do not
recommend that kind of stuff!

> So why do you have such a big hangup against developing ascii further,

I don't have "a big hangup against developing ascii further", I LOVE
"typewriter art" (pictures made with a typewriter) and other ways that
people have used the shapes of letters to create pictures, but I don't
think that it belongs in this newsgroup. And I also don't think that
they can be called "ascii art".

> commensurate with the transmission capabilities of email/newsgroup/web? Is
> the hangup just because of the words in a standard that originated in
> pre-Internet days?
> 

It's a very nice "standard", what I like about it is its simplicity, the
way it is viewable for everybody, the compactness of the pictures
compared to other image formats and also the challenge in making good
looking pictures with a very limited set of characters. (have you seen
Japanese ascii art? They have a much bigger "standard ascii" table and
the pictures that can be made with it are quite fantastic, but they do
not belong here either since they would look like rubbish for most of
us....)

> Or are there any chances for a more open mind towards progress based on
> that old standard?
> 

I have nothing against progress, but if you want to develop ascii art
please do it elsewhere and stop polluting this newsgroup with it. (and
did you take that computer science course yet? I get the impression that
you need it...)

-- 
:)
Veronica Karlsson
( e93...@sm.luth.se  http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/ )

In article <199...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
	pet...@aol.com (PeteCasso) writes:
>Again ignoring the emotional BS in this and other threads for the moment.
>Good, Veronicastein, you demonstrated what I said, email can transmit more
>than just pure ascii!
>
>So why do you have such a big hangup against developing ascii further,
>commensurate with the transmission capabilities of email/newsgroup/web? Is
>the hangup just because of the words in a standard that originated in
>pre-Internet days? 
>
..............oooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo..............
And the debate goes on and on. This article is, once again, an explanation |
for people who don't understand why some people debate about what belongs  |
in this group and what doesn't. Now a special message to PeteCasso: Please |
read this carefully and think it over. Who knows, it might save you from   |
some flames.                                                              /
                                                                         /
   |||                                                                  /
   |||                                                                 /
   | |                                                                /
                                                                     /
   (*)                                                              /
   _|_                                                             /
   \_/                                                            /  
                                                                 /
,_______________________________________________________________/
|Ok, let's have another go at that beloved ASCII-topic. Let's get technical.
|ALL the characters in the ASCII-standard are those you can see on that
|nifty table VK posts now and then. Each character has its own 7-bit code.
|What the computer sees when it reads an ASCII-picture is a bunch of 7-bit 
|binary numbers. So, when the computer reads 1100001 (97) it writes an 'a' 
|with its standard- or selected font. Neither coordinates nor size are given
|. It just says 'a'. (I made the example on the fly, please correct me if I
|got the numbers wrong). If the file for example contains pixeldata, like a
|GIF image, or formatting and colourdata, like HTML, it isn't an ASCII no 
|matter how many 'true' characters you use. The only way to develop ASCII 
|further is to change the standard to, let's say an 8-bit (or better still
|16-bit or 32-bit or...) character-table. However, the ASCII-table is only 
|7-bit (128 different combos). That's the hard facts of life. Anything else
|is character art or art that happens to contain characters. Keep on
|developing character art! I like to watch it, on a WEBPAGE! /\
|___________________________________________________________/  \
                                                                \_________.
                                                                          |
                                     \|||/                                |
,____________________________________('o`)________________________________|
|I don't like html in either e-mail or news.  Please don't use html in your
|news articles. Why? My news-reader, Knews, doesn't handle html and looking
|at html in Pine doesn't make me happier. The reason I, and many others,
|use those programs is that they're stunningly quick. The Sun UltraSpcarcs
|I use at the university are more powerful than most PC:s. But they can get
|overloaded too, since every student can do a remote-login on any computer.
|I also tend to do stupid tricks like run lots of programs at the same time.
|MIME messages are o.k. in mail and news, because MIME is a mail-standard.
|BUT: If you mime-enrich your text it isn't ASCII-art.
|________________________________________________________________________
                                     ||   ||                             \ 
                                    ..oO Oo..                             \
                                                                          /
                                                                         /
Now then, why are all these people, including me, bitching about pure    \
ASCII? You see, an ASCII will look the same on a Commodore PET            \
(a really ooold computer) and a Silicon Graphics Onyx (just about the      |
meanest graphics-machine money can buy!).                                  |
                           _                                               |
                          (_)                                              |
,____________________.   / 1 \   ,_________________________________________|
|                     \ / ton \ /
|                      `-------'
|Conclusion:
|ASCII-art is art made with the characters found in the 7-bit ASCII-table
|and saved as a pure text-file. Now, this group is the alt.ascii-art news-
|group and anything that isn't ascii shouldn't be posted. If people have the
|desire to post non-ascii stuff, fine! Just do it, but in ANOTHER group,
|please. This is an ASCII group, remember? I think people wouldn't mind if
|you posted URL:s to character art websites (java-animations, Text Art Plus
|and so on.). Just don't call it ASCII if it's not. Call it by its real
|name.
|_________________________________________________________________________
                                |
                                |
                               \|/                      
                               -*-
                               /|\ (Det var den fulaste spindel jag sett!)


>Or are there any chances for a more open mind towards progress based on
>that old standard?
>
Like I previously wrote: Keep on developing art with text! Text art can,
however, never ever be called ASCII-art, unless it's a text file with
characters from that good old 7-bit ASCII-table.

Hopefully this was the last (boring) article in this boring debate. I fear
that won't be the case, though. I hope I didn't steal too many other peoples
ideas when i made the (ugly) art around the text. If I did, please put the
correct initials where they belong. All that's left to do is to send this
#%&!!! thing.

Hej, tja, bye o.s.v. 
_
Remember: If you smash 'reply', remove the .nospam. If you don't your mail
will bounce.

Bo Elovson Grey         = No, we won't charge you anything extra for =
d94...@efd.lth.se        = our spelingmisstakes and grammatic errors  =

Curd Reinert (nos...@informatik.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE) wrote:

>By the way, did anyone ever try to view ascii-art in a VERY small font ?
>Most of it just looks great !


How about this then ?


   ~'~~ ~~~ ''~   ~'~' '~ ~'   ~' ~~~ ~   ~~' ' ~   ~~ ''~ ~'~' ''''
   ''' ~~ '~ '~'' '~'' ' '~'   ~ '''' '~ ~'   ~ '''' '' '''

Bye,

Spunk1111 wrote:
> 
> In article <199...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
> pet...@aol.com (PeteCasso) writes:
> >So why do you have such a big hangup against developing ascii further,
> >commensurate with the transmission capabilities of email/newsgroup/web? Is
> >the hangup just because of the words in a standard that originated in
> >pre-Internet days?
> 
> Oh, where is Dan Strychalski?  ASCII is ASCII--  if you develop ASCII any
> further, it is no longer ASCII.  The beauty of ASCII art is its simplicity and
> it's ability to work on all computer systems.
> 
> When you start adding html, gifs, jpgs, animation, and the like, it is no
> longer ASCII at it's finest.  Period.

Lovely piece of art Joan! So well said! :-)  (though I doubt PC will
understand it :-/ )

-- 
:)
Veronica Karlsson
( e93...@sm.luth.se  http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/ )

>Yeah! Aren't you just asciing for it?
Joristein and others, I say things like "some artists in this newsgroup
poke fun at the birthright of their own intellectual property" and if that
is considered asciing for flames, then so be it. I myself do not consider
it asciing for flames, just stating a position (my position) that is well
established and perfectly non-controversial in creative circles.

   ,,
  ( ">
 ,(->)->  http://members.aol.com/petecasso
(  ^^
 Frogstein and Birdstein (ascii art comic strips)
  Jump, Frogstein, Jump! (animated cartoons)
   Style, Birdstein, Style! (Text Art Plus)
    Fly, Birdstein, Fly! (Animated Text Art Plus)

>Pardon me, but exactly *where* are these circles?

Sandy, look into a book, and you find the copyright notice, look at a
cartoon in your newspaper, and you find the copyright notice.

>The debate over whether non-ascii art should be considered
>ascii art is so bizarre, I can't fathom *where* your arguements
>would *not* be controversial.

You missed the whole point of the debate. The point was not whether
non-ascii should be considered ascii. The point was whether ascii
variants/enhancements belong in this newsgroup or not. 

I announced Text Art Plus (and its animated version) and the critics say
this ascii enhancement does not belong in this newsgroup. I pointed out
that the critics themselves discuss ascii enhancements (html, javascript)
on this newsgroup. 

So the whole point of the debate is: we either allow or disallow _all_
ascii variants/enhancements on this newsgroup, ha!

   ,,
  ( ">
 ,(->)->  http://members.aol.com/petecasso
(  ^^
 Frogstein and Birdstein (ascii art comic strips)
  Jump, Frogstein, Jump! (animated cartoons)
   Style, Birdstein, Style! (Text Art Plus)
    Fly, Birdstein, Fly! (Animated Text Art Plus)

Okay, I can resist no longer.  ;^)

PeteCasso wrote:
> ... just stating a position (my position) that is well
> established and perfectly non-controversial in creative circles.
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Pardon me, but exactly *where* are these circles?  The debate over
whether non-ascii art should be considered ascii art is so bizarre,
I can't fathom *where* your arguements would *not* be controversial.

Sandy