ASCII art
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ASCII art is a
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...
technique that uses
computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
s for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any
text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...
, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII
art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...
require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a traditional
typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...
) such as
Courier A courier is a person or organization that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...
or Consolas for presentation. Among the oldest known examples of ASCII art are the creations by computer-art pioneer Kenneth Knowlton from around 1966, who was working for
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
at the time. "Studies in Perception I" by Knowlton and
Leon Harmon Leon D. Harmon (1922–1983) was a researcher in mental/neural processing, particularly regarding vision, who worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated. Harmon started his career as a radio serviceman and electronics hobbyist. In 1950, ...
from 1966 shows some examples of their early ASCII art. "1966 Studies in Perception I by Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon (Bell Labs)"
Image of Studies in Perception I
/ref> ASCII art was invented, in large part, because early printers often lacked graphics ability and thus, characters were used in place of graphic marks. Also, to mark divisions between different print jobs from different users, bulk printers often used ASCII art to print large banner pages, making the division easier to spot so that the results could be more easily separated by a computer operator or clerk. ASCII art was also used in early e-mail when images could not be embedded.


History


Typewriter art

Since 1867, typewriters have been used for creating visual art. Typists could find guides in books or magazines with instructions on how to type portraits or other depictions.


TTY and RTTY

TTY stands for "TeleTYpe" or "TeleTYpewriter", and is also known as
Teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point and point- ...
or Teletype. RTTY stands for
Radioteletype Radioteletype (RTTY) is a telecommunications system consisting originally of two or more electromechanical teleprinters in different locations connected by radio rather than a wired link. Radioteletype evolved from earlier landline teleprinter ...
;
character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...
s such as
Baudot code The Baudot code () is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use before ASCII. Each ch ...
, which predated ASCII, were used. According to a chapter in the "RTTY Handbook", text images have been sent via teletypewriter as early as 1923. However, none of the "old" RTTY art has been discovered yet. What is known is that text images appeared frequently on radioteletype in the 1960s and the 1970s.


Line-printer art

In the 1960s,
Andries van Dam Andries "Andy" van Dam (born December 8, 1938) is a Dutch-American professor of computer science and former vice-president for research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Together with Ted Nelson he contributed to the first hypert ...
published a representation of an electronic circuit produced on an IBM 1403
line printer A line printer Printer (computing), prints one entire line of text before advancing to another line. Most early line printers were printer (computing)#Impact printers, impact printers. Line printers are mostly associated with unit record eq ...
. At the same time, Kenneth Knowlton was producing realistic images, also on line printers, by overprinting several characters on top of one another. Note that it was not ASCII art in a sense that the 1403 was driven by an
EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight- bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding si ...
-coded platform and the character sets and trains available on the 1403 were derived from EBCDIC rather than ASCII, despite some glyphs commonalities.


ASCII art

The widespread usage of ASCII art can be traced to the computer
bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running list of BBS software, software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user perfor ...
s of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The limitations of computers of that time period necessitated the use of text characters to represent images. Along with ASCII's use in communication, however, it also began to appear in the underground online art groups of the period. An ASCII comic is a form of
webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or ...
which uses ASCII text to create images. In place of images in a regular comic, ASCII art is used, with the text or dialog usually placed underneath. During the 1990s, graphical browsing and variable-width fonts became increasingly popular, leading to a decline in ASCII art. Despite this, ASCII art continued to survive through online
MUD Mud (, or Middle Dutch) is loam, silt or clay mixed with water. Mud is usually formed after rainfall or near water sources. Ancient mud deposits hardened over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone (generally cal ...
s, an acronym for "Multi-User Dungeon", (which are textual
multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...
role-playing video game Role-playing video games, also known as CRPG (computer/console role-playing games), comprise a broad video game genre generally defined by a detailed story and character advancement (often through increasing characters' levels or other skills) ...
s),
Internet Relay Chat IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for Many-to-many, group communication in discussion forums, called ''#Channels, channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via instant mess ...
,
Email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
, message boards, and other forms of online communication which commonly employ the needed fixed-width. ASCII art is seen to this day on the
CLI CLI may refer to: Computing * Call Level Interface, an SQL database management API * Command-line interface, of a computer program * Command-line interpreter or command language interpreter; see List of command-line interpreters * CLI (x86 instruc ...
app Neofetch, which displays the
logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in ...
of the OS on which it is invoked.


ANSI

ASCII and more importantly,
ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...
were staples of the early technological era; terminal systems relied on coherent presentation using color and control signals standard in the terminal protocols. Over the years,
warez Warez refers to pirated software and other copyrighted digital media—such as video games, movies, music, and e-books—illegally distributed online, often after bypassing digital rights management (DRM). The term, derived from “software wa ...
groups began to enter the ASCII art scene. Warez groups usually release .nfo files with their software, cracks or other general software reverse-engineering releases. The ASCII art will usually include the warez group's name and maybe some ASCII borders on the outsides of the release notes, etc. BBS systems were based on ASCII and ANSI art, as were most
DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
and similar
console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...
applications, and the precursor to AOL.


Uses

ASCII art is used wherever text can be more readily printed or transmitted than graphics, or in some cases, where the transmission of pictures is not possible. This includes typewriters,
teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point and point- ...
s, non-graphic
computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. Most early computers only had a front panel to input or display ...
s, printer separators, in early
computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
ing (e.g., BBSes),
email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
, and
Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
news messages. ASCII art is also used within the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...
of computer programs for representation of company or product logos, and flow control or other diagrams. In some cases, the entire source code of a program is a piece of ASCII art – for instance, an entry to one of the earlier
International Obfuscated C Code Contest The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for Source code, code written in C (programming language), C that is the most creatively obfuscated code, obfuscated. Held semi-annually, it is desc ...
is a program that adds numbers, but visually looks like a binary adder drawn in logic ports. Some electronic schematic archives represent the circuits using ASCII art. Examples of ASCII-style art predating the modern computer era can be found in the June 1939, July 1948 and October 1948 editions of Popular Mechanics. Early computer games played on terminals frequently used ASCII art to simulate graphics, most notably the
roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most ro ...
genre using ASCII art to visually represent dungeons and monsters within them. "0verkill" is a 2D platform multiplayer shooter game designed entirely in color ASCII art.
MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable Desktop, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A ...
and
VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...
can display videos as ASCII art through the AAlib library. ASCII art is used in the making of DOS-based ZZT games. Many game walkthrough guides come as part of a basic .txt file; this file often contains the name of the game in ASCII art. Such as below, word art is created using backslashes and other ASCII values in order to create the illusion of 3D.


Types and styles

Different techniques could be used in ASCII art to obtain different artistic effects. "Typewriter-style" lettering, made from individual letter characters: Line art, for creating shapes: .--. /\ ____ '--' /__\ (^._.^)~ <(o.o )> Solid art, for creating filled objects: .g@8g. db 'Y8@P' d88b Shading, using symbols with various intensities for creating gradients or contrasts: :$#$: "4b. ':. :$#$: "4b. ':. Combinations of the above, often used as signatures, for example, at the end of an email: , \_/, **************************** (\_/) / @ @ \ * "Purrrfectly pleasant" * (='.'=) ( > º < ) * Poppy Prinz * (")_(") `>>x<<´ * ([email protected]) * / O \ **************************** As-pixel characters use combinations of ░ , █ , ▄, ▀ (
Block Elements Block Elements is a Unicode block containing square block symbols of various fill and shading. Used along with block elements are box-drawing characters, shade characters, and terminal graphic characters. These can be used for filling regions of t ...
), and/or ⣿, ⣴, ⢁, etc (
Braille ASCII Braille ASCII (or more formally The North American Braille ASCII Code, also known as SimBraille) is a subset of the ASCII character set which uses 64 of the printable ASCII characters to represent all possible dot combinations in six-dot braill ...
) to make pictures: ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⠿⠿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣾⣿⣷⣦⣌⠙⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡈⢻⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⠋⣉⠙⢻⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⡷⢀⣿⣿⣿⡿⠀⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣼⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⠁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⠟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣧⡈⠻⢿⣿⡿⠋⣠⣾⣿⣿⡟⢁⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣶⣶⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿


Emoticons

The simplest forms of ASCII art are combinations of two or three characters for expressing emotion in text. They are commonly referred to as '
emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...
', 'smilie', or '
smiley A smiley, sometimes called a smiley face, is a basic ideogram representing a Smile, smiling face. Since the 1950s, it has become part of popular culture worldwide, used either as a standalone ideogram or as a form of communication, such as em ...
'. There is another type of one-line ASCII art that does not require the mental rotation of pictures, which is widely known in Japan as
kaomoji Kaomoji emerged in Japan in the 1980s as a way of portraying facial expressions using strings of text characters, such as: * (^ω^) → happy, excited, smile * ( ͡o╭╮ ͡o)→ unhappy, sad, frown Kaomoji appeared in parallel with the emerg ...
(literally "face characters".) More complex examples use several lines of text to draw large symbols or more complex figures. Hundreds of different text smileys have developed over time, but only a few are generally accepted, used and understood.


ASCII comic

An ASCII comic is a form of
webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or ...
.


The Adventures of Nerd Boy

'The Adventures of Nerd Boy', or just 'Nerd Boy', was an ASCII comic, published by Joaquim Gândara between 5 August 2001 and 17 July 2007, and consisting of 600 strips. They were posted to ASCII art
newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are not only discussion groups or conversations, but also a repository to publish articles, start ...
alt.ascii-art and on the website. Some strips have been translated to Polish and French.


Styles of the computer underground text art scene


Atari 400/800 ATASCII

The Atari 400/800, which were released in 1979, did not follow the ASCII standard and had their own character set, called ATASCII. The emergence of ATASCII art coincided with the growing popularity of BBS Systems caused by availability of the
acoustic coupler In telecommunications, an acoustic coupler is an interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone. The link is achieved through converting electric signals from the phone line to so ...
s that were compatible with the 8-bit home computers. ATASCII text animations are also referred to as "break animations" by the Atari sceners.


C-64 PETSCII

The
Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...
, which was released in 1982, also did not follow the ASCII standard. The C-64 character set is called
PETSCII PETSCII (PET Standard Code of Information Interchange), also known as CBM ASCII, is the character set used in Commodore Business Machines' 8-bit home computers. This character set was first used by the PET from 1977, and was subsequently use ...
, an extended form of
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
-1963. As with the Atari's ATASCII art, C-64 fans developed a similar scene that used PETSCII for their creations.


"Block ASCII" / "High ASCII" style ASCII art on the IBM PC

So-called "block ASCII" or "high ASCII" uses the extended characters of the 8-bit
code page 437 Code page 437 ( CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or MS-DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (di ...
, which is a proprietary standard introduced by
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
in 1979 (ANSI Standard x3.16) for the IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS operating systems. "Block ASCIIs" were widely used on the PC during the 1990s until the Internet replaced BBSes as the main communication platform. Until then, "block ASCIIs" dominated the PC Text Art Scene.An Abbreviated History of the Underground Computer Art Scene
by Napalm, 11 October 1998, The History of Art and Technology
The first art scene group that focused on the extended character set of the PC in their artwork was called "Aces of ANSI Art", or . Some members left in 1990 and formed a group called "ANSI Creators in Demand", or
ACiD An acid is a molecule or ion capable of either donating a proton (i.e. Hydron, hydrogen cation, H+), known as a Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory, Brønsted–Lowry acid, or forming a covalent bond with an electron pair, known as a Lewis ...
. In that same year the second major underground art scene group "Insane Creators Enterprise", or
ICE Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...
, was founded.100 YEARS OF THE COMPUTER ART SCENE
Presented by Jason Scott Sadofsky and RaD Man (
ACiD An acid is a molecule or ion capable of either donating a proton (i.e. Hydron, hydrogen cation, H+), known as a Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory, Brønsted–Lowry acid, or forming a covalent bond with an electron pair, known as a Lewis ...
), Notacon Conference – Cleveland, Ohio, USA, 23–25 April 2004.
There is some debate between ASCII and block ASCII artists, with "Hardcore" ASCII artists maintaining that block ASCII art is in fact not ASCII art, because it does not use the 128 characters of the original ASCII standard. On the other hand, block ASCII artists argue that if their art uses only characters of the computer's character set, then it is to be called ASCII, regardless if the character set is proprietary or not. Microsoft Windows does not support the ANSI Standard x3.16. One can view block ASCIIs with a text editor using the font " Terminal", but it will not look exactly as it was intended by the artist. With a special ASCII/ANSI viewer, such as ACiDView for Windows , one can see block ASCII and ANSI files properly. An example that illustrates the difference in appearance is part of this article. Alternatively, one could look at the file using the
TYPE Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * ...
command in the command prompt.


"Amiga"/"Oldskool" style ASCII art

In the art scene one popular ASCII style that used the 7-bit standard ASCII character set was the so-called "Oldskool" style. It is also called "Amiga style", due to its origin and widespread use on Commodore Amiga computers. The style uses primarily the characters _/\-+=.()<>: and looks more like the outlined drawings of shapes than real pictures. The accompanying image is an example of "
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
style" (also referred to as "old school" or "oldskool" style) scene ASCII art. The Amiga ASCII scene surfaced in 1992, seven years after the introduction of the Commodore
Amiga 1000 The Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most advanced grap ...
. The Commodore 64 PETSCII scene did not make the transition to the Commodore Amiga as the C64 demo and warez scenes did. Among the first Amiga ASCII art groups were ART, Epsilon Design, Upper Class, Unreal (later known as "DeZign"). This means that the text art scene on the Amiga was actually younger than the text art scene on the PC. The Amiga artists also did not call their ASCII art style "Oldskool". That term was introduced on the PC; when and by whom is unknown and lost to history. The Amiga style ASCII artwork was most often released in the form of a single text file, which included all the artwork (usually requested), with some design parts in between, as opposed to the PC art scene where the art work was released as a ZIP archive with separate text files for each piece. Furthermore, the releases were usually called "ASCII collections" and not "art packs" like on the IBM PC.


=In text editors

=
 _____ ___ ____ _      _   
,   ___, _ _/ ___,  ,  ___,  , _ 
,  , _   ,  ,  ,   _,  , / _ \ __, 
,   _,   ,  ,  , _,  ,  ,   __/ , _ 
, _,    , ___\____, _, \___, \__, 

This kind of ASCII art is handmade in a text editor. Popular editors used to make this kind of ASCII art include Microsoft Notepad, CygnusEditor also known as CED (
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
), and EditPlus2 ( PC). The accompanying image shows an Oldskool font example done with the ASCII editor FIGlet on a PC.


Newskool style ASCII art

"Newskool" is a popular form of ASCII art which capitalizes on character strings like "$#Xxo". In spite of its name, the style is not "new"; on the contrary, it was very old but fell out of favor and was replaced by "Oldskool" and "Block" style ASCII art. It was dubbed "Newskool" upon its comeback and renewed popularity at the end of the 1990s. Newskool changed significantly as the result of the introduction of extended proprietary characters. The classic 7-bit standard ASCII characters remain predominant, but the extended characters are often used for "fine tuning" and "tweaking". The style developed further after the introduction and adaptation of
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
.


Methods for generating ASCII art

While some prefer to use a simple
text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...
to produce ASCII art, specialized programs, such as JavE have been developed that often simulate the features and tools in bitmap image editors. For Block ASCII art and ANSI art the artist almost always uses a special text editor, because to generate the required characters on a standard keyboard, one needs to know the Alt code for each character. For example, + will produce ▓, + will produce ▒, and + will produce ◘. The special text editors have sets of special characters assigned to existing keys on the keyboard. Popular
DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
-based editors, such as TheDraw and ACiDDraw had multiple sets of different special characters mapped to the
function key A function key is a key on a computer or computer terminal, terminal computer keyboard, keyboard that can be programmed to cause the operating system or an application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/com ...
s to make the use of those characters easier for the artist who can switch between individual sets of characters via basic keyboard shortcuts. PabloDraw is one of the very few special ASCII/ANSI art editors that was developed for
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
.


Image to text conversion

Other programs allow one to automatically convert an image to text characters, which is a special case of
vector quantization Vector quantization (VQ) is a classical quantization technique from signal processing that allows the modeling of probability density functions by the distribution of prototype vectors. Developed in the early 1980s by Robert M. Gray, it was ori ...
. A method is to sample the image down to
grayscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...
with less than
8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data bu ...
precision, and then assign a character for each value. Such ASCII art generators often allow users to choose the intensity and contrast of the generated image. Three factors limit the ''fidelity'' of the conversion, especially of photographs: * depth (solutions: reduced line spacing; bold style; block elements; colored background; good
shading Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying the level of darkness. Shading tries to approximate local behavior of light on the object's ...
); * sharpness (solutions: a longer text, with a smaller font; a greater set of characters; variable width fonts); * ratio (solutions with compatibility issues: font with a square grid; stylized without extra
line spacing In typography, leading ( ) is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies. In hand typesetting, leading is the thin strips of lead (or aluminium) that were inserted between lines of type in the composing stick to incre ...
). Examples of converted images are given below. This is one of the earliest forms of ASCII art, dating back to the early days of the 1960s
minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...
s and
teletype A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...
s. During the 1970s, it was popular in US malls to get a
t-shirt A T-shirt (also spelled tee shirt, or tee for short) is a style of fabric shirt named after the T shape of its body and sleeves. Traditionally, it has short sleeves and a round neckline, known as a '' crew neck'', which lacks a collar. T-shir ...
with a photograph printed in ASCII art on it from an automated kiosk containing a computer, and London's
Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, Industry (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...
had a similar service to produce printed portraits. With the advent of the web,
HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
and CSS, many ASCII conversion programs will now quantize to a full
RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...
colorspace, enabling colorized ASCII images. Still images or movies can also be converted to ASCII on various
UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
and
UNIX-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...
systems using the AAlib (black and white) or libcaca (colour) graphics device driver, or the
VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...
or mpv under
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, Linux or
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
; all of which render the screen using ASCII symbols instead of pixels. There are also a number of
smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...
applications, such as ASCII cam for Android, that generate ASCII art in real-time using input from the phone's camera. These applications typically allow the ASCII art to be saved as either a text file or as an image made up of ASCII text.


Non fixed-width ASCII

Most ASCII art is created using a
monospaced font A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with Typeface#Proportion, variable-width fonts, where t ...
, such as
Courier A courier is a person or organization that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...
, where all characters are identical in width. Early computers in use when ASCII art came into vogue had monospaced fonts for screen and printer displays. Today, most of the more commonly used fonts in word processors, web browsers and other programs are proportional fonts, such as
Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...
or Times Roman, where different widths are used for different characters. ASCII art drawn for a fixed width font will usually appear distorted, or even unrecognizable when displayed in a proportional font. Some ASCII artists have produced art for display in proportional fonts. These ASCIIs, rather than using a purely shade-based correspondence, use characters for slopes and borders and use block shading. These ASCIIs generally offer greater precision and attention to detail than fixed-width ASCIIs for a lower character count, although they are not as universally accessible since they are usually relatively font-specific.


Animated ASCII art

Animated ASCII art started in 1970 from so-called VT100 animations produced on
VT100 The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special ...
terminals. These animations were simply text with cursor movement instructions, deleting and erasing the characters necessary to appear animated. Usually, they represented a long hand-crafted process undertaken by a single person to tell a story. Contemporary
web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
revitalized animated ASCII art again. It became possible to display animated ASCII art via
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...
or Java applets. Static ASCII art pictures are loaded and displayed one after another, creating the animation, very similar to how movie projectors unreel film reel and project the individual pictures on the big screen at movie theaters. A new term was born: "''ASCIImation''" – another name of ''animated ASCII art''. A seminal work in this arena is the
Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...
ASCIImation. More complicated routines in JavaScript generate more elaborate ASCIImations showing effects like
Morphing Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes (or morphs) one image or shape into another through a seamless transition. Traditionally such a depiction would be achieved through dissolving techniques on film. Si ...
effects, star field emulations, fading effects and calculated images, such as mandelbrot fractal animations.ASCII Animation "Morph" by SkyLined (using JavaScript)
includes morph effects and mandelbrot fractal animation

includes fading effect and horizontal scrolling star field emulation
There are now many tools and programs that can transform raster images into text symbols; some of these tools can operate on streaming video. For example, the music video for American singer
Beck Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known mononymously as Beck, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his Experimental music, experimental and Lo-fi mus ...
's song " Black Tambourine" is made up entirely of ASCII characters that approximate the original footage. VLC, a media player software, can render any video in colored ASCII through the libcaca module.


Other text-based visual art

There are a variety of other types of art using text symbols from character sets other than ASCII and/or some form of color coding. Despite not being pure ASCII, these are still often referred to as "ASCII art". The character set portion designed specifically for drawing is known as the line drawing characters or pseudo-graphics.


ANSI art

The IBM PC graphics hardware in text mode uses 16 bits per character. It supports a variety of configurations, but in its default mode under DOS they are used to give 256 glyphs from one of the IBM PC code pages (
Code page 437 Code page 437 ( CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or MS-DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (di ...
by default), 16 foreground colors, eight background colors, and a flash option. Such art can be loaded into screen memory directly. ANSI.SYS, if loaded, also allows such art to be placed on screen by outputting escape sequences that indicate movements of the screen cursor and color/flash changes. If this method is used then the art becomes known as ANSI art. The IBM PC code pages also include characters intended for simple drawing which often made this art appear much cleaner than that made with more traditional character sets. Plain text files are also seen with these characters, though they have become far less common since Windows GUI text editors (using the
Windows ANSI code page Windows code pages are sets of characters or code pages (known as character encodings in other operating systems) used in Microsoft Windows from the 1980s and 1990s. Windows code pages were gradually superseded when Unicode in Microsoft Windows, Un ...
) have largely replaced DOS-based ones.


Shift_JIS and Japan

In Japan, ASCII art (AA) is mainly known as Shift_JIS art.
Shift JIS Shift JIS (also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by the Japanese company ASCII Corporation in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS ...
offers a larger selection of characters than plain ASCII (including characters from Japanese scripts and fullwidth forms of ASCII characters), and may be used for text-based art on Japanese websites. Often, such artwork is designed to be viewed with the default Japanese font on a platform, such as the proportional MS P Gothic.


Kaomoji

Users on ASCII-NET, in which the word ''ASCII'' refers to the
ASCII Corporation was a Japanese publishing company based in Chiyoda, Tokyo. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, becoming ASCII Media Works. The company published ' ...
rather than the
American Standard Code for Information Interchange ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable and 33 control characters a total of 128 code points. ...
, popularised a style of in which the face appears upright rather than rotated.


Unicode

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
would seem to offer the ultimate flexibility in producing text based art with its huge variety of characters. However, finding a suitable fixed-width font is likely to be difficult if a significant subset of Unicode is desired. (Modern UNIX-style operating systems do provide complete fixed-width Unicode fonts, e.g. for
xterm xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface. If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's Unix shell, shell. An X display device, dis ...
. Windows has the
Courier New Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface commissioned by IBM and designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler (1919–1999) in the mid-1950s. The Courier name and typeface concept are in the public domain. Courier has been adapted for use as a computer f ...
font, which includes characters like ♥☺). Also, the common practice of rendering Unicode with a mixture of variable width fonts is likely to make predictable display hard, if more than a tiny subset of Unicode is used. is an adequate representation of a cat's face in a font with varying character widths.


Control and combining characters

The
combining character In digital typography, combining characters are Character (computing), characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritic, diacritical marks (including c ...
s mechanism of
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
provides considerable ways of customizing the style, even obfuscating the text (e.g. via an online generator like Obfuscator, which focuses on the filters). 'Glitcher' is one example of Unicode art, initiated in 2012: "These symbols, intruding up and down, are made by combining lots of diacritical marks. It’s a kind of art. There’s quite a lot of artists who use the Internet or specific social networks as their canvas." The corresponding creations are favored in web browsers (thanks to their always better support), as
geek The word ''geek'' is a slang term originally used to describe Eccentricity (behavior), eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In th ...
ily stylized usernames for social networks. With a fair compatibility, and among different online tools, Facebook symbols showcases various types of Unicode art, mainly for aesthetic purpose (Ɯıḳĭƥḙȡḯả Wîkipêȡıẚ Ẉǐḳîṗȅḍȉā Ẃįḵįṗẻḑìẵ Ẉĭḵɪṕḗdïą Ẇïƙỉpểɗĭà Ẅȉḱïṕȩđĩẵ etc.). Besides, the creations can be hand-crafted (by programming), or pasted from mobile applications (e.g. the category of 'fancy text' tools on Android). The underlying technique dates back to the old systems that incorporated
control character In computing and telecommunications, a control character or non-printing character (NPC) is a code point in a character encoding, character set that does not represent a written Character (computing), character or symbol. They are used as in-ba ...
s, though. E.g. the German composite ö would be imitated on
ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...
by overwriting " after
backspace Backspace (, ⌫) is the keyboard key that in typewriters originally pushed the carriage one position backwards, and in modern computer systems typically moves the display cursor one position backwards,The meaning of "backwards" depends on the dir ...
and o.


Overprinting (surprint)

In the 1970s and early 1980s it was popular to produce a kind of text art that relied on overprinting. This could be produced either on a screen or on a printer by typing a character, backing up, and then typing another character, just as on a typewriter. This developed into sophisticated graphics in some cases, such as the
PLATO Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
system (circa 1973), where superscript and subscript allowed a wide variety of graphic effects. A common use was for
emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...
s, with WOBTAX and VICTORY both producing convincing smiley faces.PLATO Emoticons, revisited
Brian Dear,
PLATO History: Remembering the future
'' 19 September 2012
Overprinting had previously been used on typewriters, but the low-resolution pixelation of characters on video terminals meant that overprinting here produced seamless pixel graphics, rather than visibly overstruck combinations of letters on paper. Beyond pixel graphics, this was also used for printing photographs, as the overall darkness of a particular character space dependent on how many characters, as well as the choice of character, were printed in a particular place. Thanks to the increased granularity of tone, photographs were often converted to this type of printout. Even manual typewriters or daisy wheel printers could be used. The technique has fallen from popularity since all cheap printers can easily print photographs, and a normal text file (or an e-mail message or Usenet posting) cannot represent overprinted text. However, something similar has emerged to replace it: shaded or colored ASCII art, using ANSI video terminal markup or color codes (such as those found in
HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
,
IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...
, and many internet message boards) to add a bit more tone variation. In this way, it is possible to create ASCII art where the characters only differ in color.


See also

*
Micrography Micrography (from Greek language, Greek, literally small-writing – "Μικρογραφία"), also called microcalligraphy, is a Jewish form of calligrams developed in the 9th century, with parallels in Christianity and Islam,Alt code, ASCII stereogram,
box-drawing character Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. These characters are characterized by being designed to be connected horiz ...
s,
emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...
,
FILE_ID.DIZ FILE_ID.DIZ is a plain-text file containing a brief description of the content of the archive formats, archive to which it belongs. Such files were originally used in archives distributed through bulletin board systems (BBSes) and is still used ...
, .nfo (release info file) * Pre-ASCII history:
Calligram A calligram is a set of words arranged in such a way that it forms a thematically related image. It can be a poem, a phrase, a portion of scripture, or a single word; the visual arrangement can rely on certain use of the typeface, calligraphy o ...
,
Concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...
,
Typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...
, Typewriter mystery game,
Teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point and point- ...
,
Radioteletype Radioteletype (RTTY) is a telecommunications system consisting originally of two or more electromechanical teleprinters in different locations connected by radio rather than a wired link. Radioteletype evolved from earlier landline teleprinter ...
* Related art: ANSI art, ASCII porn, ATASCII, Fax art,
PETSCII PETSCII (PET Standard Code of Information Interchange), also known as CBM ASCII, is the character set used in Commodore Business Machines' 8-bit home computers. This character set was first used by the PET from 1977, and was subsequently use ...
, Shift JIS art, Text semigraphics * Related context:
Bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running list of BBS software, software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user perfor ...
(BBS),
Computer art scene The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork. Early computer art The history of computer art predates the computer art scene for several decades, with the first ex ...
, :Artscene groups * Software: AAlib, cowsay * Unicode:
Homoglyph In orthography and typography, a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes, character (computing), characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar but may have differing meaning. The designation is also applied to sequence ...
,
Duplicate characters in Unicode Unicode has a certain amount of duplication of characters. These are pairs of single Unicode code points that are canonically equivalent. The reason for this are compatibility issues with legacy systems. Unless two characters are canonically eq ...


References


Further reading

* * * * * ( Polish translators: Ania Górecka g Asia Mazur s Błażej Kozłowski ug Janusz p Łukasz Dąbrowski uk Łukasz Tyrała t. Łukasz Wilk ilu Marcin Gliński sc * *


External links


media4u.ch - ASCII Art
(ASCII Art Movie. The Matrix in ASCII Art)
TexArt.io ASCII Art collection

Textfiles.com archive

Sixteen Colors ANSI Art and ASCII Art Archive

Defacto2.net Scene NFO Files Archive

Chris.com ASCII art collection

"As-Pixel Characters" ASCII art collection

ASCII Art Animation of Star Wars, "ASCIIMATION"

ASCII Keyboard Art Collection

Animasci

Video to ASCII Demonstration in 4 stages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ascii Art Computer art Digital art New media art Internet art Multimedia Wikipedia articles with ASCII art