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From: petecasso@aol.com (PeteCasso)
Subject: ascii art for email and much more! (was: Copyright Notice,
 blah blah blah)
Date: 1997/09/02
Message-ID: <19970902022301.WAA26418@ladder02.news.aol.com>#1/1
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Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art



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)