[UFO Chicago] Ascii art, gifscii, and animated ascii

[Bob Parnass, AJ9S]

Jeremiah,

Could you explain animated ASCII in more detail?
I can understand how one might devise an algorithm to "render"
a "grayscale-like" image using ASCII characters instead of a bit map.

Before GUIs, and such, some folks at work (AT&T's Teletype Corp.)
created animations on Teletype CRT terminals using cursor
positioning commands.

Essentially, you could send a super long ASCII string to a
terminal screen which could position the cursor, write some
characters, etc.  It could highlight and blink selected portions, 
and ring the bell, too.  The animation I recall most vividly
was made by Tom Gloger (a/k/a "Train").  Using
ASCII art and cursor positioning commands, Tom animated
the image a railroad train moving across the screen.
A crossing gate had alternating blinking "lights"
and the terminal bell would sound ding-ding-ding as the train sped
by.

It was non portable because cursor positioning commands
were not standard among different makes and models of terminals.
Even in the Teletype Corp. product line, less expensive models
lacked some of the fancy positioning and "trick" commands of
the more sophisticated models.

Maybe you're thinking of something completely different.

On Tuesday 29 January 2002 11:04 pm, Jeremiah Benham wrote:
> I was thinking of some ideas for a project I am working on.  I am flirting
> with the idea of creating animated ascii.  
-- 
=========================================================================
Bob Parnass, AJ9S  parnass@megsinet.net  http://members.core.com/~parnass
                           Linux user