[HN Gopher] What Is Textmode?
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What Is Textmode?
Author : memorable
Score : 142 points
Date : 2023-02-19 13:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (polyducks.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (polyducks.co.uk)
| LoverKiddo12 wrote:
| [dead]
| qsort wrote:
| In a way, the limitations of those machines made the data
| representation so cool.
|
| These days everything is a flat raster buffer with every pixel
| being independently settable. It's incomparably more convenient
| but also more "boring".
|
| Same thing with music and audio, we have enough RAM to waste to
| let Nyquist-Shannon take care of the problem.
|
| I guess the lesson is boring = better?
| henriquecm8 wrote:
| I think at the time they were considered boring too, but now
| they are considered novel/unusual, which is more fun.
| hackernewds wrote:
| > we have enough RAM to waste to let Nyquist-Shannon take care
| of the problem.
|
| sorry what is this?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Nyquist theorem Shannon's theorem -> noise sampling +
| information encoding. Overall if I understand correctly GP
| says that audio is recorded without any smart techniques
| besides the basics. Implies that this is bad because memory
| resources are wasted. Does not discuss how smart techniques
| might waste computational resources.
| qsort wrote:
| I'm saying something else entirely.
|
| Back in the day, home computers did not have enough
| resources to play music like modern computers do. They
| instead relied on custom hardware to make noise. An example
| is the MOS SID 6581, which was on the original C64.
|
| Once you have enough resources this is unnecessary, because
| you can just make a giant sample of the entire song you
| want to play, and that's going to sound at least as good as
| analog recording (and possibly better, depending on what
| technology you are using to make the analog record).
| anyfoo wrote:
| Not at all! They are just saying that nowadays, computers
| and sound output devices are so powerful, that they can
| effectively create arbitrary sounds in the entire human
| hearing range. This used to not be the case: Sound was
| synthesized using simpler methods, which could not create
| arbitrary sounds, but had its very own character.
| Colloquially called "8 bit music" is part of that.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Yes, imposing restrictions can result in awesome and creative
| art! E.g. using a small (e.g. 16-color) color palette for pixel
| art, making art using semi-graphics block characters, music
| with mod trackers, ...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've had a lot of fun fiddling with pico-8
| (https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php), a virtual console
| with its own code, graphics and music/sound editor - heavily
| restricted (in terms of e.g. amount of code and graphics,
| it's designed so that games fit in an image file), maybe a
| bit more advanced than a Gameboy.
|
| But being restricted like that made it feel more free. Don't
| need to think about function or variable names too much since
| only two dozen characters fit on screen. Graphics, just click
| some pixels until it looks like something.
|
| But it's powerful enough to make games like Celeste
| (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145) or even 3D games
| and demoscene things.
| susam wrote:
| > It typically uses 256 characters exemplified by the font CP437
|
| I have fond memories of code page 437 (CP437). Code 1 is a smiley
| face. So is code 2. How cool is that! Codes 3 to 6 are playing
| card suits. The higher codes also contained line and box drawing
| characters. This allowed writing simple text adventure games that
| could be embellished with these graphical symbols. The smileys,
| lines, boxes, blocks, triangles, etc. could be used to add
| character to a text adventure game.
|
| Shameless plug: I recently wrote a small toolkit to render CP437
| characters on a HTML5 canvas for a retro-style game project I was
| working on.
|
| Source: https://github.com/susam/pcface
|
| Demo: https://susam.github.io/pcface/src/demo.html
| [deleted]
| bitwize wrote:
| For an example of what could be done with CP437, see Castle
| Adventure, an adventure game with roguelike elements which used
| the CP437 glyphs to represent objects and the walls of the
| castle itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_xhGQbxDPg
| layer8 wrote:
| There's a whole genre of PETSCII games. For example, a PETSCII
| version of Lemmings: https://c64online.com/c64-games/petscii-
| lemmings/
|
| A couple of games with more impressive PETSCII graphics, and some
| background info about PETSCII, in this video:
| https://youtu.be/3Sv_TM4WwC0
| saulpw wrote:
| The recent Hanukkah of Data puzzles have some truly excellent
| "Unicode art" (using more than just ASCII chars).
|
| https://hanukkah.bluebird.sh
|
| (source: I am the creator of Hanukkah of Data)
| BadKarma234 wrote:
| [dead]
| the_af wrote:
| There are still PETSCII art groups, some in facebook. I find them
| pretty impressive.
|
| PETSCII was the first kind of computer art I made as a kid (but I
| didn't know how to save it to tape, so it was also ephemeral).
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "The restriction of textmode is often what lends it its flavour.
| Having more or increasingly detailed characters in your font may
| not always give the best results."
|
| Textmode is not only for art.
|
| I am typing this comment from textmode.
|
| All scripts and programs I write are also done in textmode.
|
| It has been said that programming can be art.
| hnarn wrote:
| This page uses a self-signed cert, not every day you see that in
| the age of letsencrypt.
| ale42 wrote:
| Note that ANSI is not BBS-specific and was not _created_ for
| BBSs... it was already around and BBSs made heavy use of it.
|
| EDIT: what I find is missing on the post is Teletext art (see
| e.g., http://teletextart.co.uk/)
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Right, it was for controlling terminals originally.
|
| I recall in the early 90s I worked for an ag chemical company
| as an intern. They had a horrid budgeting app written on some
| old crusty DB platform, I was asked to make the text interface
| "better".
|
| We accessed via VT terminal emulators, so I created a library
| of ANSI drawing primitives and created a primitive window /
| menu system out of it. It blew everyone's mind at the time, but
| it was only a couple of week's work.
|
| * Edited to add a lot of DOS software and terminal stuff did
| similar things, including some nifty Terminate and Stay
| Resident utilities (TSR!).
| JackFr wrote:
| I used to be a big fan of giant ASCII art in log files, and I
| still like to include a big banner on server startup, but most of
| the cloud logging solutions like Splunk and the ELK stack don't
| really handle big ASCII pictures in the middle of the log.
|
| I was working at a big bank about ten years ago where we had a
| half-assed poorly implemented compute grid -- some customization
| of a terrible IBM product. For viewing logs across all machines
| we had a home grown web app which would allow you to navigate
| through them. I realized the app didn't sanitize the log output
| for display, and I started to include animated gifs and memes
| into my error messages. My boss told me to cut it out, I said,
| no, someone should fix the log viewer. It took me about an hour
| to fuzz inputs on our customer facing application that would
| generate a server error log which could execute arbitrary
| JavaScript on our machines. The log viewer got fixed.
| pbronez wrote:
| Lovely post. It's need to see how many speciality editors there
| are for various flavors of Textmode graphics.
|
| This also stood out to me:
|
| > The creation and refinement of analogue-to-textmode filters is
| an art in itself closer aligned to generative art than textmode
| art. Depending on the textmode restriction, communities may have
| strong opinions against using filters (specifically in ANSI where
| it has a bumpy cultural history). Premade filters are sometimes
| used as a starting point for further refinement into textmode
| art.
|
| This is exactly the GenerativeAI / AI Art debate. Apparently the
| TextMode community hit it earlier because their medium is lower
| fidelity.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| RIP telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
| kleiba wrote:
| Still works for me (just checked).
| dmd wrote:
| If you want your mind truly blown, try telnet 1984.ws (if it
| looks scrambled, fuss with your color/escape sequence support -
| it's finicky).
| thanatropism wrote:
| whaat
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Do you have a screenshot so I know when I have it right ?
| djxfade wrote:
| It's basically a "video" of Max Headroom in full color
| dmd wrote:
| https://shot.3e.org/ss-20230220_090247.mp4
|
| lol, with bonus kids audio in the background, oops, didn't
| realize i had the mic on
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| Does anyone know of a good library for easily making static
| webpages that look like old BBS ANSI graphics?
|
| I'm fed up with the modern web and seek reduced fidelity in order
| to focus on content.
| danhau wrote:
| Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but you could give
| https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss a try.
|
| More here: https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css-
| frameworks#specialize...
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| Thank you!
| pietroppeter wrote:
| Here you can mix ansi and midi: https://ansiwave.net/
|
| And it is an old project but a rather recent one, also featured
| on HN, see eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29671889
| AntoniusBlock wrote:
| This is a nice, short documentary on ANSI art and BBSs:
| https://vimeo.com/341663153
| venamresm__ wrote:
| Got to mention https://16colo.rs/
| bronikowski wrote:
| Thanks, I didn't knew about that. Into my RSS it goes!
| averagestudent3 wrote:
| [dead]
| worldsavior wrote:
| I thought he talks about textmode in DOS :D
| rolandf wrote:
| That make me think about Textual python library. And in my teen
| years I used TheDraw app for ascii/ansi art and animations for my
| RemoteAccess BBS.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| ASCII art is not always made using a monospace font. On platforms
| where a large proportion of users are using the same font face
| and size, that font can be used.
|
| Great page!
| tacticaldev wrote:
| ANSI/Ascii Art will always hold a special place in my heart. The
| Good ol' WaReZ days and of course my more embarrassing AOL
| Punters/Progs scene years from my early tweens.
| SweetMelody4444 wrote:
| [dead]
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(page generated 2023-02-20 23:00 UTC)