X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,9c8d307430ee613c,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-06-22 14:37:01 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!btnet-peer1!btnet-peer0!btnet!news5-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!news2-win.server.ntlworld.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: James Mitchelhill Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Asciiizer 1.0 Released Message-ID: X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.50 Lines: 94 Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 22:27:34 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.252.164.157 X-Complaints-To: abuse@ntlworld.com X-Trace: news2-win.server.ntlworld.com 993245502 62.252.164.157 (Fri, 22 Jun 2001 22:31:42 BST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 22:31:42 BST Organization: ntlworld News Service Xref: archiver1.google.com alt.ascii-art:6356 gg gg gg ` ` ` _g@@@_ ____ __ __ __ __ ________, __ '` Mg #*`"* _a#*%@j *@ *@ *@ ##**M#@# _wM*M@g $ $L g` ` @ @ @ gP #` @ __g@= M@@g_ (` $ $ $ gP g#******P _#` @ "@k $ $ $ $ _#P M g` @ # 7g $ $ $ _@# @_ @g___#@ __ _# M@g_____ _@ _@ _@ g@E__ "W@g____g `** $r *#M** "***** **` **` **` ******#M@ `***** @` asciiize -- an image to ascii converter "What is asciiize? Asciiizer is an image to ascii converter, written by James Mitchelhill It takes an image and converts it to text, the hope being that the text, viewed as a whole in a monospace font, will look like the image. Asciiizer was written as a response to a perceived flaw of available ascii converters, namely that they concentrated only on gradients and ignored the "shape" of the image. By combining both types of converter, asciiizer hopes to produce an image that retains both shading information and the "shape" of the image. In simple terms, you give asciiizer a picture and it gives you back some text that looks like the image. Why should I use asciiize? Currently, so far as I'm aware, it's the only image to ascii converter that implements an edge detection algorithm. In my opinion, it produces better conversions without any manual preprocessing than other software. This is just my opinion, however so if you prefer something else, don't get angry. At the time of writing, the "Image 2 ASCII 2001" competition is being held, asciiize is an entrant and it'll be interesting to see how it fares. One other advantage is that asciiize should be cross-platform. It's also GPL'd 1.3 Why shouldn't I use asciiize? It's possibly the most difficult image to ascii converter there is to both install and use. The reason for this is that asciiize is written in python and, since I'm too lazy and/or stupid to go through the rather torturous process of packing asciiize in an easy installer (maybe some nice person will do it in the future), you'll need to download and install both Python and PIL (the Pythonware Imaging Library) before you can use asciiize. The user interface is also a little lacking. In short, rather than being a nice graphical application, PIL is run from the command line. This means that, if you're using Windows, you'll need to use an MS-DOS Prompt window to run asciiize. This may present a problem to some people. If you don't use Windows, presumably you already know how to use the command line. The method of selecting what font to optimise for is, to be honest, horrible. There are reasons for this, which, if you're truly interested, you can find in the source. Perhaps someone else can improve on this? The name is designed to provoke misspellings. That's three I's. Why? It amuses me. In addition to these woes, asciiize in edge and combined modes runs very slowly, taking minutes to convert a moderately sized image to a moderately sized block of text. My computer is an 866Mhz P3 with 64MB of RAM. Running asciiize on anything slower would be painful. It's also GPL'd." ---excerpt from the README I wrote asciiizer for my own amusement before I was aware of the competition. But since there's one going on, I've entered some images into the Image 2 ASCII Competition, so you should be able to see what asciiizer can do. All the images there were optimised for andale mono 8pt, simply because I like that font. Some used gradient mode, others combined mode. So, you probably don't want to download asciiizer after that long list of why you won't want to use it. If you still do, everything's available from: -- James Mitchelhill jandrew@mailandnews.com