ASCII Art - Tips - Converting ASCII to HTML


.  ASCII and HTML => Some things mess up! why?
.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
. an exerpt from: 
 
. RFC 1866            Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0        November 1995 
 
.   A useful technique for translating plain text to HTML is to replace 
.   each '<', '&', and '>' by an entity reference or numeric character
.   reference as follows: 
 
.                     ENTITY      NUMERIC 
.           CHARACTER REFERENCE   CHAR REF     CHARACTER DESCRIPTION 
.           --------- ----------  -----------  -------------------- 
.             &       &amp;       &#38;        Ampersand 
.             <       &lt;        &#60;        Less than 
.             >       &gt;        &#62;        Greater than 
 
.        NOTE - There are SGML mechanisms, CDATA and RCDATA 
.        declared content, that allow most `<', `>', and `&'
.        characters to be entered without the use of entity 
.        references. Because these mechanisms tend to be used and 
.        implemented inconsistently, and because they conflict 
.        with techniques for reducing HTML to 7 bit ASCII for 
.        transport, they are deprecated in this version of HTML. 
 
 
. another exerpt from: 
 
. RFC 1866            Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0        November 1995 
 
.  Preformatted Text: PRE 
 
.   The <PRE> element represents a character cell block of text and is
.   suitable for text that has been formatted for a monospaced font. 
 
.   The <PRE> tag may be used with the optional WIDTH attribute. The 
.   WIDTH attribute specifies the maximum number of characters for a line 
.   and allows the HTML user agent to select a suitable font and 
.   indentation. 
 
.   Within preformatted text: 
 
.        * Line breaks within the text are rendered as a move to the 
.        beginning of the next line. 
 
.            NOTE - References to the "beginning of a new line" 
.            do not imply that the renderer is forbidden from 
.            using a constant left indent for rendering  
.            preformatted text. The left indent may be 
.            constrained by the width required. 
 
.        * Anchor elements and phrase markup may be used. 
 
.            NOTE - Constraints on the processing of <PRE> 
.            content may limit or prevent the ability of the HTML 
.            user agent to faithfully render phrase markup. 
 
.        * Elements that define paragraph formatting (headings, 
.        address, etc.) must not be used. 
 
.            NOTE - Some historical documents contain <P> tags in 
.            <PRE> elements. User agents are encouraged to treat 
.            this as a line break. A <P> tag followed by a 
.            newline character should produce only one line 
.            break, not a line break plus a blank line. 
 
.        * The horizontal tab character (code position 9 in the HTML 
.        document character set) must be interpreted as the smallest 
.        positive nonzero number of spaces which will leave the 
.        number of characters so far on the line as a multiple of 8. 
.        Documents should not contain tab characters, as they are not 
.        supported consistently. 
 
.    Example of use: 
 
.    <PRE> 
.    Line 1. 
.           Line 2 is to the right of line 1.     <a href="abc">abc</a> 
.           Line 3 aligns with line 2.            <a href="def">def</a> 
     </PRE>