23 May
2000
23 May
'00
8:53 a.m.
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some
software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
23 May
23 May
10:31 a.m.
There's a library and a bunch of apps for *nix called aalib, look for it on
freshmeat or icewalkers, or at a sunsite mirror. On faster machines it can
render stuff realtime, there's a demo that fills your screen with
real-time-rendered ascii fire. The *nix X-Windows rendering appy XaoS can
render fractals in ascii using aalib as well.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vintage Computer GAWD!" <foo(a)siconic.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 1:53 PM
Subject: Question about ASCII art
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and
Danger
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
10:50 a.m.
The pbmplus package on unix systems used to have a program for converting
raster images to ascii art. you should still be able to serach for it
on the web. Possibly netpbm might also have it.
Those images I put on the web site were scannen in back in the 60's/70's or
so, and who knows how the guys at princeton did it.. probably used a
video camera or something.
-Lawrence LeMay
There's a library and a bunch of apps for *nix
called aalib, look for it on
freshmeat or icewalkers, or at a sunsite mirror. On faster machines it can
render stuff realtime, there's a demo that fills your screen with
real-time-rendered ascii fire. The *nix X-Windows rendering appy XaoS can
render fractals in ascii using aalib as well.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vintage Computer GAWD!" <foo(a)siconic.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 1:53 PM
Subject: Question about ASCII art
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and
Danger
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
10:57 a.m.
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around???
Actually, the technique is fairly simple to program.
It was actually used in Geography/map-making programs, as a way of
printing out maps. I used to use a geographic information System
that could print out the resulting geographical answers using
various overstrikes to generate a greyscale map on normal 9 pin
dot matrix printers. And I've seen the output of many other
such programs while I was working on a second BS in geography.
I probably still have some geography books that have examples of those maps
for illustrative purposes.
-Lawrence LeMay
11:09 a.m.
On Tue, 23 May 2000, Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote:
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII
art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
Well... I don't know about the 'official' methods (if there ever were
such a thing), but one that I witnessed some many years ago over at
Tektronix involved a large flat-bed plotter with a lamp/photocell
combination mounted in a plotter-pen casing which was scanned across the
target original in a 'raster-scan' mode. (left to right, return to left
margin, drop down a specified distance, repeat)
IIRC values from 0 to 64 (or was it 32?) were read from the photocell via
a D/A circuit, and print lines were generated from a table of overprinted
characters based on the values.
Once upon a time, (and perhaps still buried in the archive somewhere) I
had a copy of the character reference chart which showed the value, the
final printed character cell, and the characters which made it up. (in the
order that they should be printed... The source of many lively debates!)
Spew forth into a print (text) file, load up some boxes of paper and a
fresh ribbon, and yer off!
-jim
---
jimw(a)computergarage.org || jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.computergarage.org
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
1:35 p.m.
At 10:53 AM 5/23/00 -0700, Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote:
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art
files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
There is/was an SGI tool to convert bitmap animations to ASCII.
Back in 1998, you were a participant in the CCC thread on
this topic which said:
It's been done. <http://www.vuk.org/ascii/film/> has a number of
movie clips converted to ASCII, and then played via a Java applet.
If you aren't on a well-equipped browser on a fast link, forget it.
I do recognize the irony of this situation.
These movies were created with the SGI 'ttyvideo' package,
<http://reality.sgi.com/employees/cpirazzi_esd/ttyvideo.html>,
which lets you convert a bitmap animation or real-time video capture
(the SGI Indy includes a camera) to an animated or static ASCII version.
- John
3:22 p.m.
On Tue, 23 May 2000, John Foust wrote:
At 10:53 AM 5/23/00 -0700, Vintage Computer GAWD!
wrote:
I was mostly referring to the ones done in the days before high-powered
workstations like SGI systems, where a feat such as scanning in a nekkid
lady would actually have been pushing the technological boundaries, not
just mocking them :)
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
I am making the assumption that most of these
ASCII art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
There is/was an SGI tool to convert bitmap animations to ASCII.
Back in 1998, you were a participant in the CCC thread on
this topic which said:
6:29 p.m.
At 05:22 PM 5/23/00 -0700, Sellam "speculum.com" wrote:
I was mostly referring to the ones done in the days
before high-powered
workstations like SGI systems, where a feat such as scanning in a nekkid
lady would actually have been pushing the technological boundaries, not
just mocking them :)
Joan Stark's page delves into a bit of history about this, talking
about pre-computer artists who eyeballed images on typewriters.
Greybeards on the Greenkeys list say that many of their images
were created the same way. This seems considerably more difficult
to me than using a typewriter. The teletype doesn't have the
same freeform flexibility in two dimensions for positioning,
not to mention the lack of a true erase. Lacking a scanner
and driven to distraction by 24-hour turnaround on batch jobs,
I'm sure many were crafted by hand. The images created by
scanner (of whatever technology) have an obviously different
feel to them compared to the hand-generated ones. I'd say that
most of the Playboy centerfolds were done by hand. Think about it:
it wouldn't be all that hard to draw a grid of 80 or 160 cells
over an image that size and eye-ball a grey value for each cell.
I have a delightful donation to my computer museum from an old RTTY
guy who sent original 50-year-old print-outs and tapes of old images.
- John
24 May
24 May
3:23 a.m.
At 05:22 PM 23-05-00 -0700, Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote:
I was mostly referring to the ones done in the days
before high-powered
workstations like SGI systems, where a feat such as scanning in a nekkid
lady would actually have been pushing the technological boundaries, not
just mocking them :)
Well the last time I did this on a "classic computer" using appropriate
technology was in about 1974. I had access to a PDP-9 with various analog
input devices and a modified X-Y plotter which was driven by analog outputs
and had some sort of photodetector (I didn't do the hardware). It was a
simple case of putting the photo in the X-Y plotter, running the scanning
program and then the "convert to printer character" program.
If I recall correctly (:-) the scanning program was written in house, but
the convert program was a DECUS submission....
23 May
23 May
1:53 p.m.
Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote:
I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII
art files were scanned
from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
scan them?
I'm not sure about other platforms but Amiga users can do this using
Personal Paint 6 onwards. There is also a PD utility on Aminet to do the
job.
--
Gareth Knight
Amiga Interactive Guide
http://amiga.emugaming.com
2:55 p.m.
::Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote:
::> I am making the assumption that most of these ASCII art files were scanned
::> from actual pictures and then rendered by some software?
::> If so, is this software still around??? And what hardware was used to
::> scan them?
::
::I'm not sure about other platforms but Amiga users can do this using
::Personal Paint 6 onwards. There is also a PD utility on Aminet to do the
::job.
I wrote a utility called ppmascii in Perl that does something of the sort but
it turns pixels into entire characters which means on a typical screen you can
only see 80x25 images and the aspect ratio is usually tweaked. I know there
are more sophisticated programs out there but I've yet to find one myself.
I usually send a -pnm -scale 1/8 to djpeg and put *that* output through
ppmascii.
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----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)ptloma.edu
-- All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegcaps awound? ---------------------------------
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10 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
ckaiser＠oa.ptloma.edu -
foo＠siconic.com -
gaz_k＠lineone.net -
Huw.Davies＠kerberos.davies.net.au -
jbmcb＠hotmail.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
jimw＠agora.rdrop.com -
lemay＠cs.umn.edu