ANSI art is still alive. We have some great modern editors, like Moebius, Durdraw, Icydraw and Pablodraw.
Some of them, like Durdraw, have fully embraced the extended Unicode character set (Utf-8 encoding instead of IBM's Code Page 437) and extended colors (xterm 256 colors instead of the traditional 16 colors), keeping ANSI art relevant and viable into the foreseeable future.
People are making logos and assets for their modern TUI apps and games, for example. Neovim themes. Ly display manager wallpapers.
I am personally glad to see that the medium is coming back into relevance. It was such a fun part of digital culture and creativity in the 90s. I hope the next generation gets to experience some of that thanks to modern tooling, instead of just observed as a relic of the past.
Edit: There is also a debate as to whether Unicode/Utf-8 characters with ANSI and Xterm escape codes constitutes "ANSI art." Some are calling it "UNSI art," or just modern terminal art.
Also, shout-out to the CP437 ANSI artists who continue to evolve the artistic styles of the medium, push the envelope, and release new ANSI packs. Hard, valuable work.
"ANSI Art" has been the true problem name all along. "ASCII Art" used the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. "ANSI Art" did not use the American National Standards Institute.
Even if one took it to mean using ECMA 35 and ECMA 48 escape and control sequences, which wholly forgets the likes of Avatar and PCBoard, "ANSI Art" usually did not actually use any ECMA 35 character set switching, instead relying upon SAUCE data and suchlike and using IBM's (not ANSI's nor ECMA's) rather different code page system and 8-bit character sets, and usually furthermore misinterpreted ECMA 48 SGR sequences when it came to blinking, bright, faint, and bold.
If people are preferring "XTerm Art" or "Terminal Art" for what is made nowadays, that seems to be a nomenclature change for the better.
More importantly, where the name is originating from, is the DOS driver. By default DOS did not interpret color codes, one would have to load ANSI.SYS for that, and that's where the term "ANSI art" comes from. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI.SYS
> There is also a debate as to whether Unicode/Utf-8 characters with ANSI and Xterm escape codes constitutes "ANSI art." Some are calling it "UNSI art," or just modern terminal art.
Yes, they do. Escape sequences have nothing to do with the encoding and code page (all characters in CSI and SGR are ASCII only, hence the same in both CP437 and UNICODE and even as UTF-8 encoded). Using the name "UNSI art" for these is good practice though to explicitly indicate UTF-8 encoding (and maybe the existence of non-standard SGR sequences, like 24 bit RGB colors).
I have a project (interactive textual adventure) where I convert graphics into ANSI/ASCII art on-the-fly. I've implemented several methods, you can choose between them with CLI flags (including different escape sequences and charactersets as well). See https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/meg4_advgame/#playing-in-a-termina...
I think that you need to re-read "escape sequences" and "American National Standards Institute" a few more times until it clicks that these are two entirely different noun phrases.
Then you need to learn a lot more about control sequences.
You can start with CSI, value 0x009B, not being an ASCII character. Then proceed to ITU T.416 (ISO 8613-6) where the SGR control sequences for indexed and direct RGB colours are standardized. Then you can learn that the "E" in ECMA-48 does not stand for "ANSI", but for "European". And finally you can discover that ECMA-48 standardizes exactly 8 colours. 16 colour SGR sequences beloved of CGA-like and VGA-like art are not in the standards and are in fact the product of IBM's AIXterm.
> I think that you need to re-read "escape sequences" and "American National Standards Institute" a few more times until it clicks that these are two entirely different noun phrases.
LOL, why is the page called "ANSI escape code" then? Why were the driver called ANSI.SYS then? I think it is you who should re-read that escape sequences were standardized by ANSI a few more times until it clicks.
> You can start with CSI, value 0x009B, not being an ASCII character.
CSI is NOT 0x009B (in fact C1 shorthand is not supported anywhere, not in the old 7-bit video terminals, and not in the modern UTF-8 aware terminal emulators either, and definitely wasn't supported by ANSI.SYS, hence no ANSI art uses it, never ever).
From the wiki page, I quote: "For Control Sequence Introducer, or CSI, commands, the ESC [ (written as \e[, \x1b[ or \033[ in several programming languages) is followed by any number (including none) of "parameter bytes" in the range 0x30–0x3F [...]"
That's all 7-bit ASCII characters in the full sequence (introducer, parameters, separators, terminators as well), dude. It is definitely you who should re-read a few more times until it clicks.
> Then you can learn that the "E" in ECMA-48 does not stand for "ANSI", but for "European".
Then you can learn that the driver that give the name "ANSI art" was called ANSI.SYS and not ECMA.SYS. Doesn't really matter which standard TBH, because the driver was called ANSI, period.
> 16 colour SGR sequences beloved of CGA-like and VGA-like art are not in the standards
LOL, one: CGA had 4 colors and not 16, and second: the 16 colors in SGR are defined by the standard alright. See for yourself, ECMA-48 section 8.3.117 page 62: https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-4... (8 base colors named explicitly and their "increased intensity" variants in mode 1 (page 61), thus making up 16 colors in total).
CGA in text mode and low resolution graphics mode had 16 colors. So did CGA composite color graphics. Normal CGA graphics mode is 4 color. Hence why ANSI.SYS supported 16 colors in 1983, a year before EGA was introduced.
Since text mode essentially works like ROM tiles (character glyphs) on an 80x25 grid, the 16kb of CGA is enough to store color information (RGB and Intensity bits) for reach cell.
This dovetails nicely with the fullscreen ANSI viewer I made to fix the static PNG issue: https://sure.is/ansi
You can paste any 16 Colors link and it will render, including packs. I mean to improve on it someday, but it has some fun features like setting the baud rate for display, adjust the blending blocks, keeps any text selectable, etc.
Its not as elegant or ethereal as the hand-crafted stuff, but for us mere mortals, with little to no artistic ability it could prove useful in certain design endeavors.
ANSI art is still alive. We have some great modern editors, like Moebius, Durdraw, Icydraw and Pablodraw.
Some of them, like Durdraw, have fully embraced the extended Unicode character set (Utf-8 encoding instead of IBM's Code Page 437) and extended colors (xterm 256 colors instead of the traditional 16 colors), keeping ANSI art relevant and viable into the foreseeable future.
People are making logos and assets for their modern TUI apps and games, for example. Neovim themes. Ly display manager wallpapers.
I am personally glad to see that the medium is coming back into relevance. It was such a fun part of digital culture and creativity in the 90s. I hope the next generation gets to experience some of that thanks to modern tooling, instead of just observed as a relic of the past.
Edit: There is also a debate as to whether Unicode/Utf-8 characters with ANSI and Xterm escape codes constitutes "ANSI art." Some are calling it "UNSI art," or just modern terminal art.
Also, shout-out to the CP437 ANSI artists who continue to evolve the artistic styles of the medium, push the envelope, and release new ANSI packs. Hard, valuable work.
"ANSI Art" has been the true problem name all along. "ASCII Art" used the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. "ANSI Art" did not use the American National Standards Institute.
Even if one took it to mean using ECMA 35 and ECMA 48 escape and control sequences, which wholly forgets the likes of Avatar and PCBoard, "ANSI Art" usually did not actually use any ECMA 35 character set switching, instead relying upon SAUCE data and suchlike and using IBM's (not ANSI's nor ECMA's) rather different code page system and 8-bit character sets, and usually furthermore misinterpreted ECMA 48 SGR sequences when it came to blinking, bright, faint, and bold.
If people are preferring "XTerm Art" or "Terminal Art" for what is made nowadays, that seems to be a nomenclature change for the better.
> "ANSI Art" did not use the American National Standards Institute.
Yes, they do. All the color escape sequences (CSI and SGR) used in these were standardized by ANSI. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
More importantly, where the name is originating from, is the DOS driver. By default DOS did not interpret color codes, one would have to load ANSI.SYS for that, and that's where the term "ANSI art" comes from. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI.SYS
> There is also a debate as to whether Unicode/Utf-8 characters with ANSI and Xterm escape codes constitutes "ANSI art." Some are calling it "UNSI art," or just modern terminal art.
Yes, they do. Escape sequences have nothing to do with the encoding and code page (all characters in CSI and SGR are ASCII only, hence the same in both CP437 and UNICODE and even as UTF-8 encoded). Using the name "UNSI art" for these is good practice though to explicitly indicate UTF-8 encoding (and maybe the existence of non-standard SGR sequences, like 24 bit RGB colors).
I have a project (interactive textual adventure) where I convert graphics into ANSI/ASCII art on-the-fly. I've implemented several methods, you can choose between them with CLI flags (including different escape sequences and charactersets as well). See https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/meg4_advgame/#playing-in-a-termina...
I think that you need to re-read "escape sequences" and "American National Standards Institute" a few more times until it clicks that these are two entirely different noun phrases.
Then you need to learn a lot more about control sequences.
You can start with CSI, value 0x009B, not being an ASCII character. Then proceed to ITU T.416 (ISO 8613-6) where the SGR control sequences for indexed and direct RGB colours are standardized. Then you can learn that the "E" in ECMA-48 does not stand for "ANSI", but for "European". And finally you can discover that ECMA-48 standardizes exactly 8 colours. 16 colour SGR sequences beloved of CGA-like and VGA-like art are not in the standards and are in fact the product of IBM's AIXterm.
> I think that you need to re-read "escape sequences" and "American National Standards Institute" a few more times until it clicks that these are two entirely different noun phrases.
LOL, why is the page called "ANSI escape code" then? Why were the driver called ANSI.SYS then? I think it is you who should re-read that escape sequences were standardized by ANSI a few more times until it clicks.
> You can start with CSI, value 0x009B, not being an ASCII character.
CSI is NOT 0x009B (in fact C1 shorthand is not supported anywhere, not in the old 7-bit video terminals, and not in the modern UTF-8 aware terminal emulators either, and definitely wasn't supported by ANSI.SYS, hence no ANSI art uses it, never ever).
From the wiki page, I quote: "For Control Sequence Introducer, or CSI, commands, the ESC [ (written as \e[, \x1b[ or \033[ in several programming languages) is followed by any number (including none) of "parameter bytes" in the range 0x30–0x3F [...]"
That's all 7-bit ASCII characters in the full sequence (introducer, parameters, separators, terminators as well), dude. It is definitely you who should re-read a few more times until it clicks.
> Then you can learn that the "E" in ECMA-48 does not stand for "ANSI", but for "European".
Then you can learn that the driver that give the name "ANSI art" was called ANSI.SYS and not ECMA.SYS. Doesn't really matter which standard TBH, because the driver was called ANSI, period.
> 16 colour SGR sequences beloved of CGA-like and VGA-like art are not in the standards
LOL, one: CGA had 4 colors and not 16, and second: the 16 colors in SGR are defined by the standard alright. See for yourself, ECMA-48 section 8.3.117 page 62: https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-4... (8 base colors named explicitly and their "increased intensity" variants in mode 1 (page 61), thus making up 16 colors in total).
Please don't spread false information.
> CGA had 4 colors and not 16
CGA in text mode and low resolution graphics mode had 16 colors. So did CGA composite color graphics. Normal CGA graphics mode is 4 color. Hence why ANSI.SYS supported 16 colors in 1983, a year before EGA was introduced.
Since text mode essentially works like ROM tiles (character glyphs) on an 80x25 grid, the 16kb of CGA is enough to store color information (RGB and Intensity bits) for reach cell.
For the broader field I tend to use the term “character-cell art”.
My favorite ASCII art group is Galza, some examples:
https://16colo.rs/pack/galza-13/Shd-dphn.ans
https://16colo.rs/pack/galza-13/zj-humming.txt
I enjoyed this new one.
https://16colo.rs/pack/codi_01/CODI01.ans
One group that still releases ascii and uploads to 16colo.rs is Impure.
They also make demos and won 2nd place at the Evoke demo party this year with the following ascii style demo:
https://demozoo.org/productions/396656/
This dovetails nicely with the fullscreen ANSI viewer I made to fix the static PNG issue: https://sure.is/ansi
You can paste any 16 Colors link and it will render, including packs. I mean to improve on it someday, but it has some fun features like setting the baud rate for display, adjust the blending blocks, keeps any text selectable, etc.
A recently released tool by devault: https://devault-ascii.pages.dev/ascii-generator/
Its not as elegant or ethereal as the hand-crafted stuff, but for us mere mortals, with little to no artistic ability it could prove useful in certain design endeavors.
See also https://artpacks.org
I actually pushed a lot of updates to it just this past week. There's keyboard and swipe/gesture navigation, too.
I really LOVE these things.
some previous discussion:
2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44665816
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