X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,7660b3afa4358d0 X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-06-10 09:52:16 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!nntp-server.caltech.edu!egnor From: egnor@sloth.ugcs.caltech.edu (Dan Egnor) Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: TALK: image to ASCII converters Date: 10 Jun 1994 16:36:24 GMT Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA Lines: 23 Message-ID: <2ta4q8$2p8@gap.cco.caltech.edu> References: <2t89o1$p8u@freenet3.scri.fsu.edu> <10JUN199412010918@pavo.concordia.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: sloth.ugcs.caltech.edu In article <10JUN199412010918@pavo.concordia.ca>, DAN THE FUNKY MOOSE MAN wrote: >Both programs convert only to black-and-white. >Actually, gif-to-ascii is ripe for research into better algorithms. If anyone is interested, I wrote a "ppmtoascii" converter that does output in (fairly crude) color. It's what I used for my second ASCII movie (bige.txt) .... (ppm is a lowest-common-denominator picture file format; them pbmplus utilities have a lot of converters for it, including a giftoppm program) It's not nearly as sophisticated as gifscii in terms of trying to match a character based on its shape; it merely has a list of 'nice' characters ordered by 'brightness' and selects from this based on the average intensity over the character cell. It's not clear, however, that gifscii's trickiness gains very much, at least for the images I was working with. My quick hack also lacks gifscii's very nice contrast/brightness controls. I actually found that animation buys a *lot* in terms of perceived image quality and clarity; probably not much of a surprise. Dan