Talk:ASCII art

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Contents

[edit] PAGE TOO WIDE

[edit] In the press

  • This article was linked to by Wired magazine today, June 2, 2005. —RaD Man (talk) 14:37, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] ASCII art status of Good Article

Anybody else interested in cleaning up the article to bring it to the level of Good Article? I mean it was nominated as featured article in 2004, although it did lack the necessary quality back then as it still does today. Good Article however, is a goal that seems to be reasonable. The article came a long way over the past months. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 06:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison to Egyptian pictograms is not accurate

Anyone else feel that the section "Text art in the ancient world" is a bit too excessive? Egyptian pictograms are different than ascii art, which is a image composed of many symbols, whereas pictograms are simply one graphic for one idea. I think the section should be removed. Leif.t 21:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC) leif.t

I don't think this is what was meant by that statement; instead, it meant that ancient Egyptians made something that resembled what we would call ASCII art (though with Egyptian hieroglyphics, obviously, not ASCII) themselves, not that the hieroglyphics themselves are similar to ASCII art (which they are clearly not). However, the claim remained unsourced and was a throwaway line, ancillary to the main document, so I removed it. Xihr 20:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I re-added the section with reference. Since the reference is an over 1 hour long video which some might not watch to the end, did I reference to an older post of mine from February where I elaborate what the content of the video is and embedded the video itself into the post. Check it out and let me know, if you still think that the claims made are not warranted. Thanks. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 17:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that your reference is correct. You should credit the creator of the video in the references section, not the person who is hosting it. I will remove the reference unless it is correctly credited.--Leif.t 17:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I updated the reference to the creator of the video and the date of the recording (rather than date of publishing on the Internet). I also refered to the creators pseudonym and his article at Wikipedia. Let me know if that works. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 12:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add this?

http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ --frotht 06:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

It is already a reference for ASCIImation in the article. See reference 16. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 12:20, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed rename: Category:Articles with ASCII art -> Category:Wikipedia articles with ASCII art

I've proposed at CFD that Category:Articles with ASCII art be renamed to Category:Wikipedia articles with ASCII art. Please comment. My main motivation for proposing this is that I've come to feel that the category's current double use makes it suboptimal for either purpose (maintenance or navigation). The renaming itself would be somewhat incidental to the main goal of making this category serve one purpose only. Other suggestions for solving the problem would be welcome, too. (If there was an ASCII art Wikiproject I'd post this there, but since there doesn't seem to be one, I figure this talk page is as good a place as any for finding potentially interested people.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

As long as we are consistent with the naming of things, I agree. The proposed name is less ambiguous.--roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 08:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree. As long as consistency is enforced, it's fine with me. Xihr 08:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A big archive of Amiga ascii

  • nice archive, but why the heck are you not putting it on its own domain? I got the ASCIIcartel.com and ASCIIcartel.org domain names secured. If you are involved with the archive, contact me (see details at my user page) that we can work something out regarding hosting etc. I have an old school text art archive too (not amiga) and space on my server --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 19:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Asciimations!

AsciiMator - just like the article's description of animated asciimations! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.209.164.54 (talk) 02:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


somebody add: http://www.mudmagic.com/figlet-server/ a banner ascii generator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.82.139.57 (talk) 19:00, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Mona standard.png

Image:Mona standard.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. — Κaiba 18:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Repetition of warez groups' use of ASCII art

Both "History of ASCII art" and "Uses of ASCII art" mention warez groups, I think it's redundant but have a hard time deciding which section it should be in. At least the paragraph in the history section should be moved up, now it seems like warez groups' ASCII art was a recent phenomenon.Pelzi (talk) 12:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean specific warez groups (I removed that) or just the mentioning of the word "Warez Group" itself. If it is the first option, then it was already taken care of hehe. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ASCII Art History

I removed the reference (citation needed) template from the sentence: "ASCII art had been originally developed around 1966, by computer-art pioneer Kenneth Knowlton, who was working for Bell Labs at the time."

The template was added with the following comment: "the cgihist reference implies Knowlton was at Bell Labs during this period, but does not state Knowlton was first"

The reference shows not only that the two were working at Bell Labs, but also a reference of their work. The ASCII Standard was published in 1963 and revised in 1967. If you can find examples of ASCII art that were clearly created before 1966, but after 1963, you would have found a lost treasure and I would be happy to correct the article. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

There was (if you take the time to look) ongoing GIS work around the same time. Removing the request for a proper source without taking the time to understand the question isn't a way to improve the topic. Tedickey (talk) 11:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Do you have a reference? A Link? A ISBN? If there are references then we should update the article and correct it. I don't know what you mean with "GIS work". So lets work on this together. I believe we both want the article to be correct, right?! --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 09:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I googled on "printer graphics", having noticed that the examples shown were of the type which reproduced a photograph using overstrikes and selected characters to obtain different shading effects. GIS refers to maps. For example:
http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/studios/brc/framework/steinitz.txt
http://gis2.esri.com/esripress/shared/images/82/HarvardBLAD_screen.pdf
http://www.landscapemodeling.org/html/ch1/ch1text.htm#figure1.32
Tedickey (talk) 20:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Am I blind? I cannot find any examples of pre-1966 ASCII art, not even text art for that matter. Btw. "printer graphics" is maybe not the best keyword to look for this stuff. We are not talking about Teletype or Typewriter art here. We are also not talking about raytracing or 3d modelling. The Teletype stuff etc. is mentioned in the article regarding the history and origin of ASCII art and then links to the corresponding article. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 10:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Probably you're missing the point: you see one example of "ASCII Art" (which is not art - it reproduces photographs - and not ASCII - read the picture closely and see that it uses non-ASCII symbols). From the given information, it is not possible to state that Knowlton and Harmon claimed to be the first in this area. The images appear to be produced with a printing device, whether a terminal or line-printer is not stated. This indicates that it was neither, though the WP topic Leon Harmon says it was. I pointed out concurrent work which does use the overstruck printing technique to produce maps, and due to the timescale could not have been inspired by Knowlton and Harmon. So the best you can do with the paragraph is tone it down, and pointing out additional pioneers per se, such as the GIS stuff. Tedickey (talk) 18:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Gotcha, you want somebody else saying "Yeah, I looked and that's the oldest I could find" in order to be a reference. This was actually said be somebody else years ago, but not an authority like the New York Times. The problem is that you will not find (or better, it will be highly unlikely) that a modern day authority will make such a statement. I will think about rephrasing the section a bit to be more clear. It will resemble something like this. "It did not take long for the first ASCII art to appear after the ASCII standard was introduced. Among the oldest known examples of ASCII art are the ... " etc. That's a fact that is proven by the simple closeness in time between the proven date of the introduction of ASCII as a standard and the verifyable works by Kenneth Knowlton. It also leaves room for the possibility that earlier ASCII art examples might exist (or not). What do you think about that? Cheers! --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 08:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
However, you still haven't established a causal relationship between the appearance of the ASCII standard and the appearance of ASCII art. Tedickey (talk) 11:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
For an authority, you'd need someone who actually did some of the work - doesn't appear that they're commenting. The first examples I saw were a couple of years later, on IBM (which wasn't ASCII in any case - noting that most of the hardware was not ASCII). Tedickey (talk) 11:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
The article is about ASCII art and not text art so it can not start before the ASCII standard. However, the article also honors predecessors and some side tracks of ASCII art, because there is no article about the more general subject of text art at Wikipedia. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 14:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I removed the sentence "It did not take long for the first ASCII art to appear after the ASCII standard was introduced." if that makes you happy. It leaves even more room for content, ASCII standard related or not. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 14:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
That's an improvement (even allows for printer graphics). I'll keep in mind to revisit and perhaps comment on that. Tedickey (talk) 15:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Any ideas to solve the dilema will be apprechiated. Thanks. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 23:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] COI Edits by Kenny McMillan for Motilism

Wordsinart is Kenny McMillan (easily verified), who has for some time been attempting to use WP as an advertising medium for his prints, which are loosely related to this topic. Aside from advertising, the topic appears to not be notable (whether overlaid pictures on text, or printer graphics). It's certainly not a "new an unique development" as claimed in the edit-as-advertising applied to this topic. Complicating the discussion are McMillan's IP-edits, which will make further edits suspect. Tedickey (talk) 23:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You have any links to have at least a look at it? "Molilism" returns virtually nothing in the major search engines. "Wordsinart" + "Kenny McMillan" returns nothing. WP as in WordPress? If that is the right term for your abbreviation then I would expect content about this subject all over the Internet and thus in Google. It would also bother me, if it stands not for WordPress. ASCII art is a digital medium. Okay a lot of stuff got lost or is buried somewhere on a crappy site with buried treasures that blocks unintentionally search engines from getting to know about it. But there are archives like textfiles.com and others who collect everything they can get their hands on and publish it for free. Not finding any reference for the existence of this "art style" and this art form being notable contradicts itself (particular in this subject). For all I know could the whole thing be made up. There is also no reference to any physical evidence that could be checked by somebody if he wants to. I suggest to remove the whole paragraph if no references will be provided within the next few days. At least something to look at and discuss further about. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 23:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
google only finds about 300 hits, most of which are advertising for McMillan's website. It's not notable, is a technique that I've seen occasionally in the past, in advertising media or posters. ("WP" is an abbreviation for Wikipedia). I agree the paragraph should be removed. Tedickey (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I removed it. See details two paragraphs further down. I also found some other interesting facts that were not really supporting the Motilism case. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 22:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Maps

A vandal removed my addition. ASCII art is used to fill in seas, mountains, etc. on ASCII maps. Jidanni (talk) 01:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Motillism Removal

I removed the following block from the article that was added by User:Wordsinart

[edit] Motillism

{{notability-sect}}<!-- term invented by Kenny McMillan, is not in widespread use --> [[Image:100bushquotes.jpg|thumb|right|Image of George W Bush created using 100 selected verbal gaffes]] Another example of text based art is Motillism. Motillism is a process that reproduces classic pictures using relevant and entirely legible text. The characters are painted in the appropriate color to reproduce the intended image. The viewer 'sees' the image when viewed from a short distance but, on closer inspection, the eye refocuses to clearly read the text. The trick here is that the image viewed from a distance is not really there in its entirety, but the brain fills in the missing spaces so that the image is appreciated properly.

Despite from the fact that we have a clear case of WP:COI here (see User_talk:Wordsinart#Spam_in_Motillism and User_talk:Tikiwont/Archive_5#Motillism) does the content not belong into the ASCII art article, because Motillism or however you want to call it, is not ASCII art. Text art? likely. ANSI art? by a far stretch. ASCII art? no way. Different colors and typeface are being used in order to generate the desired effects. ASCII art is TWO colors and ONE typeface per image. We do not have an article about the general topic of "Text Art" and an article about "Motillism" cannot stand on its own merits. So if somebody feels the need of Motillism to be included somewhere in Wikipedia, I would suggest starting on a good article to Text art in general. :) --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 22:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "ASCIIfy" and ASCII art

A Google search on "asciify" and derivatives brings up a lot of hits relating to ASCII art. Should thes term be mentioned in this article? I'm more familiar with the use of the term to describe transforming text from extended Latin to ASCII. --A12n (talk) 22:58, 10 June 2008 (UTC)