X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fd588,a9ab8f51cd2385de,start X-Google-Attributes: gidfd588,public X-Google-Thread: 110f55,a9ab8f51cd2385de,start X-Google-Attributes: gid110f55,public X-Google-Thread: f996b,a9ab8f51cd2385de,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public From: cfbd@southern.co.nz (Colin Douthwaite) Subject: 4th Anniversary of alt.ascii-art 4 Date: 1997/09/03 Message-ID: <5uk8t7$k24$1@mnementh.southern.co.nz> X-Deja-AN: 270584216 Organization: Southern InterNet Services Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art,alt.ascii-art.animation,alt.binaries.pictures.ascii =========================================================================== , ___ _,_ _, _, _ _, _ _ _,_ __, __, _, _, __, , _ / | | |_| / \ |\ | |\ | | | / |_ |_) (_ /_\ |_) \ | ~~| | | | |~| | \| | \| | |/ | | \ , ) | | | \ \| ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ) ~' _, __, _, _, ___ _, _, _, _ _ _, __, ___ / \ |_ /_\ | | /_\ (_ / ` | | /_\ |_) | \ / | | | | , | | | , ) \ , | | ~~ | | | \ | ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ================================= 4 ================================== _ _ _ _ | |_| | (_) ___ | |_ ___ _ _ _ _ | _ | | | (_-< | _| / _ \ | '_| | || | |_| |_| |_| /__/ \__| \___/ |_| \_, | |__/ 1/9/97 ============================================================= cfbd ==== From: allenk@ugcs.caltech.edu (Allen Knutson) Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Historical precedent for ASCII art? Date: 21 Jan 1994 07:11:02 GMT Message-ID: <2hnv68$5qf@gap.cco.caltech.edu> Historically, have there been other forms of art that are akin to ASCII art, in using to create pictures a standard set of shapes not designed for it? All that occurred to me are some of Dali's great tricks, where several people form a skull and that sort of thing, but it's not quite the same. Perhaps a typesetter like [casts invocation] Kibo would know? Allen K. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art From: pk6811s@acad.drake.edu Subject: Re: Historical precedent for ASCII art? Message-ID: <1994Jan21.092347.1@acad.drake.edu> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 1994 15:23:47 GMT In article <2hnv68$5qf@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, allenk@ugcs.caltech.edu (Allen Knutson) writes: > Historically, have there been other forms of art that are akin to > ASCII art, in using to create pictures a standard set of shapes not > designed for it? All that occurred to me are some of Dali's great > tricks, where several people form a skull and that sort of thing, > but it's not quite the same. Quilts, cross-stitch, colored sands, colored brick and tile, mosaic tile, colored corn, kids' toy blocks, hand-held string figures, ... Give people something to work with and they will make art. My 'thing' is domino pictures, done much like the pixellated ascii except using complete sets of dominos. A 6' by 4' picture of an astronaut made of 40 sets of double-nines is on display at the Dial Center at Drake University. Paul Kline pk6811s@acad.drake.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: peekstok@u.washington.edu (Anna Peekstok) Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Re: Historical precedent for ASCII art? Date: 21 Jan 1994 20:53:43 GMT Message-ID: <2hpfcn$590@news.u.washington.edu> >Historically, have there been other forms of art that are akin to >ASCII art, in using to create pictures a standard set of shapes not >designed for it? There's a tradition in classical painting (i.e., Renaissance and after) of making up faces and figures out of vegetables, kitchen implements, etc. Anna Peekstok --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jorn@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger) Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.ascii,alt.ascii-art, alt.ascii-art.animation,alt.ascii-art.pixellated Subject: META A brief history of ascii-art groups on netnews Date: 13 Mar 1994 13:24:54 -0600 Message-ID: <2lvpa6$jca@Mercury.mcs.com> In article on alt.binaries.pictures.ascii, Sandro Sherrod wrote: >Whats the difference between here and alt.ascii-art? With the exception >more posts over therE? A brief history of ascii-art groups on netnews: Rumor has it that there was an ascii-art group on alt years ago, that failed for lack of interest. No evidence has turned up, though. The main purveyor of fine ascii-art-archives during the early 90s had been Steven Sullivan, in his postings to rec.humor. Alt.config folklore says proposals for a new group had been coming up every few months, for some time before September 1993, when the discussion that led to alt.ascii-art began. Resistance in alt.config was intense, led by Tim Pierce who argued that ascii-art was binary and belonged in the alt.binaries.pictures.* hierarchy. He got a lot more support on this than seems credible, in retrospect. After a month of pointless hassling, the gordian knot was cut by Joel Furr newgrouping alt.ascii-art. It was generally agreed that alt.arts.ascii would have been the better choice (to keep the number of new first-level hierarchies down), but the group took off pretty quickly, so we decided to go with it.... except after a month, when it became clear a lot of sites weren't getting a.a-a, Tim took the opportunity to newgroup a.b.p.ascii, along with a request to rmgroup alt.ascii-art, already a thriving subculture! The tide of opinion turned against Tim at this point, and a rmgroup for abpa went out, resulting in sites that carried both, neither, *and* just one or the other-- but abpa has pretty well withered, while a.a-a has grown to where a split has been seriously discussed, and over-hasty newgroups posted for: alt.ascii-art.pixellated (by people wishing ascii-gifs would go away) and alt.ascii-art.animation (ditto for ansi animations) a.a-a.p seems to have vanished, but a.a-a.a gets occasional posts and may well be revived at some point. I wouldn't mind trying to move the asciigifs over to alt.binaries.pictures.ascii, since it's a group that won't go away... The plan for the future, now, is to create a *moderated* rec.arts.ascii (Bob Allison has volunteered to moderate). Anyone with experience proposing and creating a moderated big-7 group, or other constructive ideas, should write Bob or me... jorn --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: META A brief history of ascii-art groups on netnews Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.ascii,alt.ascii-art,alt.ascii- art.animation,alt.ascii-art.pixellated From: Colin_Douthwaite@equinox.gen.nz (Colin Douthwaite) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 16 Mar 94 21:01:47 +1300 Jorn Barger (jorn@MCS.COM) wrote: JB> A brief history of ascii-art groups on netnews: JB> Tim took the opportunity to newgroup a.b.p.ascii, along with a JB> request to rmgroup alt.ascii-art, already a thriving subculture! JB> The tide of opinion turned against Tim at this point, and a JB> rmgroup for abpa went out, resulting in sites that carried both, JB> neither, *and* just one or the other-- but abpa has pretty well JB> withered, Aah...thanks...now, _at last_, I understand why alt.binaries.pictures.ascii has not been utilised for large postings; animations; binaries; uuencoded items etc. - it is all part of a historical private war amongst net.personalities. All very sad and counter-productive, and (mercifully) unknown to most of us. JB> I wouldn't mind trying to move the asciigifs over to JB> alt.binaries.pictures.ascii, since it's a group that won't go JB> away... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ :-) Well that's a start ( and quite an admission too ). Looks like both Joel Furr _and_ Tim Pierce were winners in the end. JB> The plan for the future, now, is to create a *moderated* JB> rec.arts.ascii (Bob Allison has volunteered to moderate). Whose plan, and whose future ? Perhaps it really _is_ the answer to create such a moderated group so that those who are dissatisfied with alt.ascii-art can pursue their moderated interests in the new moderated group and leave alt.ascii-art free for those who enjoy it and manage to live with it's irritations. >From what I have seen of the moderated groups they tend to be dull and restrictive and soon lead to more dissatisfactions than those expressed in "open" newsgroups. How many folks want to submit their stuff to a moderator and have it ignored or rejected ? For all its faults and irritations alt.ascii-art has already become a very successful newsgroup having a very high signal-to-noise ratio. How many of the 4,400 newsgroups on Internet can you say that about ? It will be sad to lose the input of talented posters who move to such a moderated group but I suspect that alt.ascii-art will survive very nicely.....because it clearly meets a need. The saga continues........ . /:\ |:| |:| |:| |:| __ ,_|:|_, / ) *_ _ _ _ _ _ _ * (Oo / _I_ | `_' `-' `_' `-' `_' `-' `_'| +\ \ || __| ^ | | \ \||___| | | LONG LIVE alt.ascii-art | | \ /.:.\-\ | (*) |_ _ _ _ _ _ _ | \^/ | |.:. /-----\ | _<">_ | `_' `-' `_' `-' `_' `-' `_'| _(#)_ | |___|::oOo::| o+o \ / \0 0/ \ / (=) / |:<-T->:| 0'\ ^ /\/ \/\ ^ /`0 |_____\ ::: / /_^_\ | | /_^_\ | | \ \:/ || || | | || || | | | | d|_|b_T____________________________T_d|_|b \ / | \___ / / / | \_____\ / / `-' / / _________________________/ -unknown- /____________ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============== LATER NOTES ============== | The unmoderated newsgroup, alt.ascii-art, was created by Joel Furr | in September 1993. | The moderated newsgroup, rec.arts.ascii, was created in June 1994 | with Bob Allison ( Scarecrow ) as Moderator. | In July 1996 Don Bertino took over as Moderator of rec.arts.ascii | with Allen Mullen as deputy moderator. | On 23 Dec 1996 the last posting from the moderator, Don Bertino, | appeared in rec.arts.ascii and since that date the newsgroup has | had no traffic. ======================== Traffic Statistics ======================== +-- Messages per month | ! +-- Percentage crossposted | | | | + Propagation: | | | how many sites | | | receive this group | | | at all | | | | | | +-- Share: | | | | % of news readers | | | | who read this group. V V V V Feb 94 alt.ascii-art 733 2% 36% 1.4% Mar 95 alt.ascii-art 600 8% 47% 1.0% alt.ascii-art.animation 128 32% 35% 0.2% alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 307 42% 37% 0.5% rec.arts.ascii 217 13% 53% 0.3% May 95 alt.ascii-art 413 9% 48% 0.7% alt.ascii-art.animation 96 15% 36% 0.2% alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 200 49% 37% 0.4% rec.arts.ascii 180 11% 55% 0.3% Sep 95 alt.ascii-art 905 8% alt.ascii-art.animation 61 34% alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 110 100% rec.arts.ascii 309 5% Oct 95 alt.ascii-art 1062 26% alt.ascii-art.animation 152 16% alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 123 100% rec.arts.ascii 282 18% Feb 96 alt.ascii-art 788 15% alt.ascii-art.animation 53 12% rec.arts.ascii 274 35% Apl 96 alt.ascii-art 804 15% alt.ascii-art.animation 74 76% rec.arts.ascii 185 24% Jun 96 alt.ascii-art 707 29% alt.ascii-art.animation 89 68% alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 104 100% rec.arts.ascii 35 65% Jul 96 alt.ascii-art 1100 23% alt.ascii-art.animation 95 54% alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 187 100% rec.arts.ascii 81 9% Aug 97 alt.ascii-art 1373 alt.ascii-art.animation 49 alt.binaries.pictures.ascii 78 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jorn@mcs.com (Jorn Barger) Newsgroups: rec.arts.ascii Subject: Talk: Why I like ascii art Date: 11 Sep 1995 17:26:51 -0500 [Here's a little essay someone requested, by email] Wherever you look in computer journalism, the emphasis is always on faster computers and more memory and more colors... and more money! So, when people write about the future of the Internet, they're always dreaming of real-time video links, multimedia, virtual reality, etc etc etc. But for me, what's greatest about the Internet is how efficient it is at transmitting *text*. For the same 30 kilobytes you could use for a small GIF on the WWWeb, you can just as well transmit *fifteen typewritten pages* of text. (It's not even 'a picture is worth 1000 words'-- it's more like 5000, or better!) And a videolink uses millions of times as much bandwidth as would an email conversation... And ascii text is also the lowest common denominator that allows *everyone* on the net to share data-- people are starting to extend email to include graphics and fonts, but these attempts exclude the majority of users, and we haven't begun to see these formats (like MIME) posted to netnews... So the ability of ascii-art to include images in email and netnews postings could be a very useful technology... if only word-processors included a simple set of commands for drawing ascii shapes, or pasting together layers of ascii 'clip art'! My efforts in exploring ascii-art have been an attempt to see how much is possible, in representing, eg, maps, or human faces. I find that if you devote a great deal of time to it, you can create some very rich images... so it ought to be possible someday to have rich libraries of clip-art that everyone can easily integrate into their text files-- if only the word- processors are revised to make this easier. But (alas!) the word-processor designers seem preoccupied with GIFs and MPEGs and WAV files... jorn barger chicago, illinois, usa sept 11 1995 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "J. Melusky" Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Re: Why *is* it called ASCII Art ? Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 12:54:18 -0700 Message-ID: On 20 May 1996, Ken West wrote: > The ASCII.art FAQ mentions that > > Before computers, ASCII art was made on typewriters, > > teletype machines (5 bit), and was created typographically. > > There are even tee-shirts with the :-) smiley. > This raises a couple of questions: > 1. What was it called when done on typewriters (before ASCII > code was invented)? Well, according to Andrew Belsey, who posted to this group awhile back, he says that there is a book available called: Typewriter Art, edited by Alan Riddell (London, 1975) ISBN 0-900626-99-2 > 2. Why is it called ASCII art now? > Now, with the prevalence of PCs, using ASCII characters, someone > has decided that this character-based art is to be called ASCII > art. When you think of it, once the characters are on paper, or > even on a screen, the fact that they possibly were orginally stored > with 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 bits inside some computer memory has nothing > to do with the art itself; so, can someone clarify how the term > "ASCII art" came about? And is there any rationale behind the fact > that it clearly HAS come about? regards, Ken West It wasn't just someone who popularized the phrase ascii-art. It was all those who voted in alt.config. A year ago I subscribed to alt.config and discovered that 100 votes plus a lot of convincing to create a new Usenet group. I wish I was around to be a lurker back then but hey they made a good vote of it! Maybe Scarecrow knows more about the alt.config story? I don't even know if alt.config is still there? Ahhh break time is over. take care, Jon --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "R. Crawford" Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Ascii, the hard way Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 04:59:17 +0800 Organization: Canada Internet Direct, Inc. Message-ID: <330CBB25.5A44@geocities.com> Reply-To: rcrawford@geocities.com Looking thru an old magazine (1960 and we won't mention which one), I came across an amazing ascii artist. Here's the article that went with the pictures (48K .gif to follow under Subject=Hard way .gif): All day Guillermo Mendana Olivera works as a stenographer in Leon, Spain; every night he types pictures. Samples of his work shown here are, moving clockwise: typings of Ike, of Mendana himself, a detail from a picture of a church, and the Puerta de Alcala in Madrid. Each picture takes about 70 hours. Mendana uses small o and x and periods, dashes and commas. He starts with a paper covering all but a sliver of a photo; as the paper moves down he copies a line at a time. Imagine, on a typewriter! No software to comvert .bmp's. No easy corrections or fancy font tricks. They didn't even have white-out then. This man deserves recognition in the ascii art world! I'm trying to track him down thru family or friends on the net. If I can, maybe I will post more of his work. If you have a problem with your news reader and .gif's, you can see the gif at http://mypage.direct.ca/r/rcrawfor/ascii_bg.gif Long live .txt! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Re: History of ASCII Art [Question] Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 19:04:10 +0000 Message-ID: In article <19970324054800.AAA18942@ladder01.news.aol.com>, spunk1111 writes: >I "discovered" ASCII art about 1 1/2 years ago... I'm curious as to >its background. I have yet to see anything written about it in a >textbook. But I have heard that it was around in the 60s- of course >not like it is on the internet today. Someone also mentioned to me >(a long time ago) that they used to create pictures on the keypunch >computer cards... who was it? Ascii art has been around as long as I have. There were large "charcacter shaded" pictures around on lineprinters when I was at university in the 70s: usually either nudes or mickey mouse. Someone posted that there had been "typewriter art" since typewriters were widespread -- 1920 or so, I think. =========================================================================