::|CONTENTS
- Things to Know
- Tools
- See Also
ANSI art is a text art form based on MS-DOS's code page 437 and ANSI.SYS. Similar to
ASCII art, it's origins can be tracked to the history of computing: in ANSI's case, its development and relevance among computer users primarily coincided with the BBS scene's rise and fall.
It is comprised of a character sheet with a total 256 character count. It also uses 16 text colors and between 8 and 16 background colors, depending on which coloring standard is being used. The de facto file format used for ANSI Art is .ans.
Things to Know
- The amount of background colors available to you is dependent on whether or not you are using a semi-unofficial standard "iCE Colors", created by art group iCE. iCE Colors allow you to use every color as background to text.
- ANSI files have a feature to allow characters to flash (strobing of certain characters with a length of ~1 second) indefinitely. In order to utilize this feature, most programs require you to use the second row of background colors (the brighter colors) whilst iCE Colors is off.
Tools
GUI-based PC's (windows, mac, linux)
-
PabloDraw - what appears to be the most used ANSI editor today. Less resource intensive.
-
Moebius - similar to PabloDraw, more focused on aesthetics.
DOS
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ACiDDraw - created and used by the ANSI group ACiD.
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The Draw - THE original DOS user's ANSI editor.
Tools
-
ansiart2utf8 - a Linux tool that does exactly what its name says.
See Also
Wikipedia article
16colo.rs (formerly Sixteen Colors) - an ANSI art archive
Roy/SAC's ASCII Art Academy - resources & tutorials for making 7- and 8-bit ASCII art, as well as ANSI art
cp437 - wiki article about higher order ascii characters used in ANSI art
