Just set my BBS up, loving it, but man, I wish I could do ANSI art and make it look "mine" - I am technical but one thing I am not is creative :(

bagwaa
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Re: ANSI art
By: Richard Bagshaw to All on Sat Jul 12 2025 11:17 am

Just set my BBS up, loving it, but man, I wish I could do ANSI art and make it look "mine" - I am technical but one thing I am not is creative :(

I've always been the same way, more technical than creative.. I've often done things like basic ANSI menu screens, but always felt like I didn't have the creative side to do ANSI art.

Nightfox

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Re: ANSI art
By: Nightfox to Richard Bagshaw on Sat Jul 12 2025 11:53:19

I've always been the same way, more technical than creative.. I've often done things like basic ANSI menu screens, but always felt like I didn't have the creative side to do ANSI art.

I feel like it's more of a "gift" than something you can just learn.
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Re: ANSI art
By: Richard Bagshaw to All on Sat Jul 12 2025 11:17 am

look "mine" - I am technical but one
thing I am not is creative :(

In the same boat, here. But you know,
you'd be surprised what you can do when
you just open up an editor, put in all
the main menu commands, a box here, a
line there, and bam.. custom main menu.
Maybe another line...

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Re: ANSI art
By: phigan to Richard Bagshaw on Sun Jul 13 2025 03:23:50

In the same boat, here. But you know,
you'd be surprised what you can do when
you just open up an editor, put in all
the main menu commands, a box here, a
line there, and bam.. custom main menu.
Maybe another line...

haha, yeah, I did think about just doing that, not even sure what the decent editors are, I looked at something called "durdraw" which looks kinda neat.

One thing I did wonder is if I could somehow finagle AI todo all the heavy listing for me, but it seems to only want to create ASCII art and it's VERY basic even by my standards lmao.

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Re: ANSI art
By: Bagwaa to phigan on Sun Jul 13 2025 02:11 pm

haha, yeah, I did think about just doing that, not even sure what
the decent editors are, I looked at something called "durdraw"
which looks kinda neat.

you could always use old ansi packs to take tidbits or get inspiration.
you could convert bmp gif etc to ansi with some editors.
you can use figlet to generate menus.

One thing I did wonder is if I could somehow finagle AI todo all the
heavy listing for me, but it seems to only want to create ASCII
art and it's VERY basic even by my standards lmao.

i doubt it.
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Re: ANSI art
By: Richard Bagshaw to All on Sat Jul 12 2025 11:17:33

Just set my BBS up, loving it, but man, I wish I could do ANSI art and make it look "mine" - I am technical but one thing I am not is creative :(

I feel your pain. I am complete void of any creativeness when it comes to graphics. I leave it to the experts. My BBS menus are just simple lines and stuff I saw somewhere else and made similar. I can't even make stuff I steal look good lol.

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Re: ANSI art
By: Richard Bagshaw to Nightfox on Sat Jul 12 2025 21:34:54

I feel like it's more of a "gift" than something you can just learn.

Indeed. Otherwise, the world would be over run by musicsions, painters, poets, sculpters, architects, etc. Art appreciation would almost cease to exist 'cause there'd always be someone who could do the same thing you can.

I like to think everybody's creative in some way. You just have to find it. Me, I couldn't design a website, but if you tell me what you want, provide a general layout, I can usually put something together.

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Re: ANSI art
By: Bagwaa to phigan on Sun Jul 13 2025 14:11:37

One thing I did wonder is if I could somehow finagle AI todo all the heavy listing for me, but it seems to only want to create ASCII art and it's VERY basic even by my standards lmao.

Next time, have it do the heavy /lifting/ for you. AI's very picky. :)

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From Newsgroup: alt.bbs.synchronet

"Richard Bagshaw" <richard.bagshaw@2:250/17.remove-umq-this> writes:

Just set my BBS up, loving it, but man, I wish I could do ANSI art and
make it look "mine" - I am technical but one thing I am not is
creative :(

Congratulations and welcome to sysophood. I only launched my very own
bbs last October and love it.

I'm creative enough to make something ugly. And, if you don't mind some unsolicited advice, start slowly.

While I still haven't created any ANSI art for my own bbs, I have
created ASCII art. I started with figlet, playing with various fonts,
and going from there.

I have a feeling my move to using ANSI will eventually replace my
ascii. For now, though, it's perfectly suitable as it is so I may not.

I also take old ansi art and play with it locally. Nothing I've done
would ever be suitable on a bbs.

I just wish it were easier to render CP437 on a linux terminal.

D
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Re: ANSI art
By: nelgin to Richard Bagshaw on Sun Jul 20 2025 17:08:16

I am technical but one thing I am not is creative

I am complete void of any creativeness when it comes to graphics

Ditto, and I want to be creative, that's the frustrating part. I tried looking on YT for ANSI art tutorials, but all I could find were tutorials on how to use a particular ANSI editor. We need some ANSI artists to step up and give us poor shmucks some tips and tricks to at least hopefully inspire us.

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I like to think everybody's creative in some way. You just have to find it. Me, I couldn't design a website, but if you tell me what you want, provide a general layout, I can usually put something together.

Ha, I like the thought of this, however after 48 years I've still not found mine. Having said that, I've been writing code for 35 of those years, 30 in a professional setting, and I have a friend that swears by the idea that coding is an art form.

I love "clean code" but I'm not a perfectionist, I see the quality in getting something done and shipped as much as I see the need for developers to be able to understand what the person before them wrote.

Maybe that's the art form? a craft as such?

... Light year: 1/3 less calories than your regular year

Re: Re: ANSI art
By: bagwaa to Mortar on Wed Jul 30 2025 11:13 pm

I like to think everybody's creative in some way. You just have to find

Ha, I like the thought of this, however after 48 years I've still not found mine. Having said that, I've been writing code for 35 of those years, 30 in a professional setting, and I have a friend that swears by the idea that coding is an art form.

I love "clean code" but I'm not a perfectionist, I see the quality in getting something done and shipped as much as I see the need for developers to be able to understand what the person before them wrote.

Maybe that's the art form? a craft as such?

Yeah, I there are different forms of creativity - Artistic creativity, problem-solving creativity, and so on. If someone has a good level creativity in thinking and problem-solving, that can help a lot with programming. I do think there's something to be said for code that does its job well and is clean and fairly easy to understand.

Nightfox

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Hey Daniel!

On Wed, Jul 30 2025 13:59:45 -0500, you wrote:

I just wish it were easier to render CP437 on a linux terminal.

What are you trying to do, exactly? If you just want to display an ansi, check this out:

https://github.com/keaston/cp437

If you're looking for a program that can draw ANSI, take a look at the linux version of Pablodraw:

https://github.com/cwensley/pablodraw

Although, I believe you'd need a desktop environment with X. If you already have that, you just have to install a couple prerequisites.

There may even be some other drawing programs that are compatible with Linux as well.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
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From Newsgroup: alt.bbs.synchronet

"Accession" <accession@PHARCYDE.remove-9yq-this> writes:

To: Daniel
Hey Daniel!

Heyas

On Wed, Jul 30 2025 13:59:45 -0500, you wrote:

I just wish it were easier to render CP437 on a linux terminal.

What are you trying to do, exactly? If you just want to display an
ansi, check this out:

https://github.com/keaston/cp437

Thanks I'll review it. None of my machines, sans my main one, has a
graphical environment installed.

If you're looking for a program that can draw ANSI, take a look at the
linux version of Pablodraw:

https://github.com/cwensley/pablodraw

Although, I believe you'd need a desktop environment with X. If you
already have that, you just have to install a couple prerequisites.

Yeah, my pi500 can render ansi fine, and as long as I"m on that machine,
I can see all the glyphs. But, as I said, I wish it were easier to
render ansi on linux terminal. Even on my pi500, I may load wayfire or
whatever it's called whenever i need to do something major on the
web. Otherwise, I'm in the CLI exclusively.

For ansi art, I use the mystic ansi editor for design work.

If you have other advice, I'm often on mrc or relayed on ddial if you
want to chitchat.

D
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Re: Re: ANSI art
By: bagwaa to Mortar on Wed Jul 30 2025 23:13:00

...I have a friend that swears by the idea that coding is an art form.

Your friend is correct. Programming has always been considered both a science and an art.

I love "clean code" but I'm not a perfectionist, I see the quality in getting something done and shipped as much as I see the need for developers to be able to understand what the person before them wrote.

One of my programming instructer's favorite lines was, "Make it work, then make it pretty". I've always followed this maxim and, for me, helps speed up development.

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Re: Re: ANSI art
By: Daniel to alt.bbs.synchronet on Thu Jul 31 2025 01:47 am

Yeah, my pi500 can render ansi fine, and as long as I"m on that machine,
I can see all the glyphs. But, as I said, I wish it were easier to
render ansi on linux terminal. Even on my pi500, I may load wayfire or whatever it's called whenever i need to do something major on the
web. Otherwise, I'm in the CLI exclusively.

So Linux terminals, or most of them anyway, render ANSI escape sequences very well. What you're talking about are the IBM CP437 characters used for BBS "graphics" back in the day. Most Linux terminals assume/use UTF-8 text encoding by default, so those "high characters" indicate something other than the CP437 characters of MS-DOS days. You can either change the locale/LANG of the terminal to something other than UTF-8 or (better yet) use tools that convert CP437 to UTF-8 when reading/displaying legacy BBS display files ("ansi art").

The "ansi" part isn't the problem.
--
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Hey Daniel!

On Thu, Jul 31 2025 03:47:16 -0500, you wrote:

https://github.com/keaston/cp437

Thanks I'll review it. None of my machines, sans my main one, has a graphical environment installed.

Not needed for the above. I use it here in my UTF-8 only Linux terminal, where no GUI is installed.

For ansi art, I use the mystic ansi editor for design work.

That works. Other than that, I haven't used any others, so I can't tell you if there's any other options that work as good, or better.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
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