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by sgbeal 905 days ago
TheDraw was one of the few pieces of 1990s shareware i purchased, and i have fond memories of it, but i feel compelled to ask: what use is that sort of thing nowadays? Back then we used them to make animations for dial-up BBSes, but the internet has long since obsoleted that. :-?
3 comments
indyjoenz 905 days ago
Thanks for taking a look. There are a few uses for a program like this in 2024.

1: Some people still make ANSI and ASCII art as a means of exploring the medium.. well, artistically. Check out https://16colo.rs/ and you will see what I mean. They showed around 30 ANSI art packs published for the year 2023. It isn't exactly the heyday of the 90s, but it's not completely dead, either.

2: Some people like to use ASCII art in text user interface programs, in README files, etc. This is probably the real modern use for a program like this.

3: BBSs aren't completely dead, either. :) See: https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/ for examples. Most of them cater to the old IBM-PC style character encoding (or some other antiquated platform) and ANSI standards, but I think there is opportunity to have modern 256 color Unicode BBSs. With social media being so problematic in 2024, why not enjoy a tried and true medium? They usually connect over the internet now, of course.

I admit, the commercial applications are limited. It's mostly just good creative or nostalgic fun.

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sgbeal 905 days ago
> It's mostly just good creative fun.

The absolute best justification for coding. Thank you for your detailed response.

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retrac 905 days ago
Don't discount #2 there. I still make ASCII art when commenting source code. Flow charts! I like to keep documentation as human-readable and editable text. (Version control friendly.)

ASCII art diagrams can be automatically rendered to an image, too: https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/

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pengaru 905 days ago
After a long-time collaborator got bit by the ansi/ascii art bug we slapped together a silly little game during the covid lockdowns using his ANSIs for sprites:

https://sars.pengaru.com/

experimental outdated wasm build @

https://sars.pengaru.com/wasm/

I found it kind of interesting as a medium for quick-n-dirty cheeseball horrid pixel style art. There's something to be said for a legible toilet paper roll in so few glyphs worth of creative effort/time.

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kevin_thibedeau 905 days ago
I used Moebius a few months ago for a new corporate logo that couldn't be drawn in plain ASCII.
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