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Tools: -> Editors, Converters, Miscellaneous
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Many people believe that ASCII drawings are created
with some magic tools. Wrong! In fact, most better ASCII pictures were created
with very simple text editors (like Notepad). If you are a beginner
then you should not start using any tool but practise first in a text editor and
look at other peoples advice. You can find some tutorials and other useful
information on my Resources page.
If you are instead looking for a special function that
would come in handy from time to time, then you will probably find something
useful here,
Please do not
ask me where to get these programs,
how to install them or how they work. I don't know. Instead, use the search engine of
your choice to search the net. I do not have or use these tools myself!
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- JavE -
[Freeware, written in Java]
In the text editor regime the situation has
recently improved.
The answer to all your needs is JavE
by Markus Gebhard. It is a text editor that functions more like a graphical editor:
you have a brush, a fill tool, can draw circles and lines. Remember the output is
a very fine ASCII. In addition Markus has implemented almost any known algorithm,
tool or helper that existed before in other programs (e.g. Figlet, GIF to ASCII
conversion, Flip and Mirror, ASCII animation, etc.).
It does run very stable on many different operating systems. There are minor problems
because neither IBM's nor Sun's Java distributions are anywhere
close to bug-free.
But JavE is in fact the best (read: most useful and
stable)
Java program I know. It even has a swell recovery function in case it
eventually does
crash. Well, the list of features is endless - please look for yourself!
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- TheDraw - [Freeware, DOS, ASCII and ANSI editor, very old but still available]
A very nice DOS editor for ASCII and ANSI.
I have used
it very often in `the old days'
because of the block copy with foreground/background functionalit |
| - Meph's ASCII Editor -
[Freeware, Windows, stable Beta version, development stopped?]
A Windows text editor with
some nice features. I never used it myself but have heard that it can be quite useful,
e.g. for big and giant drawings.
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| - Email Effects -
[Shareware, Windows and Macintosh]
Another fancy editor designed
to enhance your
emails with ASCII pictures.
Before there was JavE this was something special, now
it is nothing compared to JavE. |
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Please do not expect miracles from a converter
program. They cannot produce `line' art, only grey scale. And for grey scale
it is `the bigger the better': for wallpaper printing the results are
fantastic, for a 10 by 10 character image to include in your next email the
result is usually pathetic. Personally I don't use them much, so I cannot
say much for or against the different programs below.
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- GIFSCII -
[Freeware, C source available, i.e runs on many systems, command line
tool]
A very well-known GIF to ASCII converter. It is
the best but should be available for many systems. |
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- PicTexter -
[Freeware, Windows]
Image to ASCII converter, optional: outpout in Arial.
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- Ascii Generator -
[Freeware, Windows]
Reads a lot of image formats and offers the image preocessing needed for a good conversion.
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- MosASCII -
[Shareware, Windows]
HTML output.
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- Ascii art generator -
Pure Ascii or coulored HTML output. |
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- ASCII to HTML converter -
Converts Ascii into HTML.
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- ANSI tools -
A great number of tools for creating, converting and viewing
ANSI art can be found on the here.
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