X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,db5e10806433cc77 X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public From: Veronica Karlsson Subject: Re: Posting ascii art on the web Date: 1997/02/10 Message-ID: <32FF38EF.27EE@sm.luth.se>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 217803997 references: <19970207050200.AAA10527@ladder01.news.aol.com> <32FB5C05.41C67EA6@sm.luth.se> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: Solace Computer Society mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: alt.ascii-art x-mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5 sun4m) Sven Guckes wrote: > > e93-vkn@sm.luth.se (Veronica Karlsson): > > The good things about ascii are: > > 1. It only takes up a small amount of memory (which gif does not! for people > > like me who have small accounts this is a very important thing...) > > Well, there a big GIFs and there are small GIFs - same with ASCII. > Generally a 10x10 cm ascii image takes up less memory than a 10x10cm gif image.... > > 2. It is easy to copy and change in an editor where > > you can have a large amount of pictures in one file. > > Who says that there isn't a good GIF editor which allows to do the same? > you would either have very small ascii images in it or a very BIG file - or both... > > if you have them as gif you will have to save the whole gif, > > Same with ASCII. > yes of course - but the equivalent ascii version is smaller! I have made a little test to illustrate this. I have made a gif and an ascii version of this little ascii trumpet: ___________/| (__|||__) \| Then I compared their sizes: ~/ascii/diverse>ls -l trumpet.* -rw-r--r-- 1 e93-vkn 255 Feb 10 15:20 trumpet.gif -rw-r--r-- 1 e93-vkn 28 Feb 10 15:22 trumpet.txt ~/ascii/diverse> Here you see that the gif takes up 255 bytes and the equivalent text version takes up 28 bytes. In other words, the gif is nine times as big as the ascii. (and this is the way you have to count when you have a small account. I tried to compress the two versions but that was not efficient as they both became bigger that way). > > if you have enough memory > > Same with ASCII. > yes, but given a certain amount of memory you can squeeze many times more ascii into it than gif. (and I, like most other people who live in the real world, have a limited amount of memory that I want to use in an efficient way. I would LOVE to have an infinite amount of memory that I could just spread myself across but the sad truth is that I do not have such resources.) > > and then copy it all by hand into an editor > > Why? > that is what I wonder too....(if you have it all as text you don't have this problem, you just cut-and-paste...) but if you want to change an image it has to go back to ascii form again... (and my experience of ascii pictures says that people often want to copy and change pictures that others have made) > > which most people will think is just too much work. > > s/most people/I/ > Sure, I say that, but I really think most people would agree that copying a big ascii image by hand is too much work! > > and you only get about one or two pictures per file. > > Why? > You will need a BIG gif to fit in more than one or two medium sized ascii pictures, like this one for example: \ _ / \ |#| / \ |#| / \ @#####@ ______ !!! __ __ (### ###)-. BBBBB LL AA MM MM !!! .(### ###) \ --- BB BB LL AAAA MMMM MMMM !!! / / (### ###) ) _____ BBBBB LL AA AA MM MMM MM !!! / (=- .@#####@|_--" BB BB LL AAAAAAAA MM M MM _ / /\ \_|l|_/ (\ BBBBB LLLLL AAA AA MM MM (!) / (=-\ |l| / \ / \ \.___|l|___/ \ /\ |_| / (=-\._________/\ \ / \.__________/ # -t8t- # # _8_ # \#######/ But if you want a gif image that is 10000 pixels high and 10000 pixels wide please go ahead and make one but don't expect anybody to want to see it... (especially over a slow connection) - that is if you can get your image processing program to accept an image that big... I tried this too and all I got was a crashed program and this error message: ~/www/pics>X Error of failed request: BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation) Major opcode of failed request: 53 (X_CreatePixmap) Serial number of failed request: 1920 Current serial number in output stream: 1922 [2] Exit 1 xpaint ~/www/pics> the computer just didn't want to handle such a monster gif! > Veronica - I think you are missing a few things... > > Sven Oh, sure, I miss a lot (I miss my cat for example, and summer, and riding camps, and a certain kind of ice cream, ...), but computer knowledge I do not miss :) [I did not make any of those pictures and I do not know who did] :) Veronica ( e93-vkn@sm.luth.se http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/ )