Subj : Re: Getting new users
To   : Adept
From : Nightfox
Date : Thu Nov 10 2022 09:07:29

  Re: Re: Getting new users
  By: Adept to Geri Atricks on Thu Nov 10 2022 10:25 am

 GA> Ni>> been done since the internet became popular.  I feel like the
 GA> Ni>> text interface, ANSI & ANSI artwork, etc. is a defining feature
 GA> Ni>> of the BBS we run, and that's why we run them.

 Ad> I largely agree with this, but I also would like to see things like having
 Ad> ANSIs that have greater resolution than 80x25, and maybe even have support
 Ad> for unicode, or at least a simplified set of unicode. 

For a long time, people have made ANSI art bigger than that.  Sometimes it's 80 columns but much longer than 25 rows, which makes it easy to view (scrolling) on a regular terminal.  Sometimes I've seen them wider though, and perhaps there are ANSI viewers that let you scroll sideways and up and down to see large artwork..

 Ad> Basically, I like the lack of graphics and variety of things that make it
 Ad> hard to share memes or have posts go viral, but don't get why that means
 Ad> we have to stick to 16 colors, 80x25, 7-bit ASCII. 

 Ad> Though, on that note, I think Synchroterm has been making progress on
 Ad> those things, and I know Magiterm supports greather than 16 colors, even
 Ad> if I'm not quite sure how to draw anything with more colors. 

In the 90s, when BBSing was still very popular, there were actually some graphical BBS standards that were emerging.  One that was fairly common was RIP (Remote Imaging Protocol) - I think it was similar to EGA graphics, with 16 colors and supporting basic graphics and buttons, etc..  There was another I saw that was more proprietary, supported by a BBS package called RoboBoard, that I think supported more colors and higher resolutions, which provided a somewhat AOL-like online experience.  RIP gained some common support with some BBS packages and door games, but it didn't last very long because the internet soon became very widespread and popular, and BBSes were largely abandoned, so support for things like RIP didn't progress very far.

For more graphical support, I think RIP would be the logical way to go since it's an existing standard for BBSes.  I think I had heard SyncTerm has recently added RIP support.

Nightfox
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