Future of the Ascgen
It has been a while now, but since Christmas I’ve been back working on the code.
The entire code base has been cleaned (with the help of these + CodeRush and Refactor!), the whole design is being improved, and lots of little bugs have been fixed. It’s already massively different and far more readable then before. I’m keeping the change log up to date with the code in the SVN CVS: http://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/changelog
The next release will be Ascgen dotNet version 2.0.0 (or to make things easier, Ascgen 2.0). I don’t know when it will be ready, it just depends on whether I want to release something functionally almost identical to the current version, or if I go forward with some new features.
The main new thing I want to add is a new method of conversion which will be available in addition to the current ones. It’s for fixed width fonts only, and gives a much better output for line art style images.
Also, I don’t know if I’ll keep up with this, but: http://twitter.com/ascgen
Post War ASCII Art
An article about how text art used to be done back in 1948:
Seeing a TV show as a child, where Rolf Harris was shown how to do something similar to that flower, is what got me started on this whole ASCII art thing. 
Bulgarian Translation + News
Thanks to Sah War we now have a translation file for Bulgarian (Apologies about taking so long to upload it).
There are some spacing issues which I will resolve in the next version.
If things work out there may be something special released before Christmas. It’s not a new version (~mid January), it’s a separate but related little program which I’ve been planning for a few days. The prototype isn’t finished, so if it’s a horrible failure then we will say no more about it.
Russian and Ukrainian translations
Thanks to Warrior, we now have translation files for the Russian and Ukrainian languages.
Translation files page:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133786&package_id=284594
Direct links to the cvs:
Russian
Ukrainian
To use them, just download the file and place it in the same directory as the Ascii Generator executable (only have one translation file there at a time or it won’t work).
If you would like to translate the program into another language, please download this file, and edit the strings between the “value” tags. You can contact me here.
Ascgen dotNET 0.9.6 released
I was waiting until I’d finished rewriting one of the controls, but I just had a pretty huge crash bug pointed out to me.
Added a form to preview the colour output
Added menu item to change the position of the image and text frames from horizontal to vertical
Added automatically choosing the panels orientation layout from the screen size
Changed main form to access the RichTextBox through an interface
Moved interfaces into their own namespace
Fixed being unable to save variable width font conversions as an image
If you do see something obviously wrong, please report it on the sourceforge page (“Help/Report a bug…”). You don’t have to have an account there and you can do it anonymously.
Ascgen dotNET 0.9.5 released – Dithering and more
Internal design changes, and some cool new stuff.
Dithering
Thanks to an great idea sent to me through sourceforge, the program now comes with the ability to run a dithering filter over the output.
Why would you want this? Well, the text output is like having an image with a small palette of colours. Adding noise to the output helps to blend the different greyscale colours together and produces a result that is (hopefully) more pleasing the eye. There’s also a random element which weights the dithering and helps hide the pattern.
Check out the wikipedia article for more information on the theory behind this topic.
Translation file changes
The program will now automatically load a translation file if one (and only one) is in the same directory as the executable. The filename has to be in the format translation.*.xml with * being the language code (although at the moment it doesn’t matter what you put there). For an example, here’s the American translation file: translation.en-us.xml
The full list of untranslated strings is here:
http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml
Text Widget
The brightness/contrast and levels widgets have been merged into one new widget, using tabs to switch between them and a new control for adjusting the dithering levels.
Read more
Colour ASCII Art tips, Localization Example and more
Colour ASCII Art
Since I’ve been playing around with the colour image output a lot in the last few months, I thought I’d share a few tips.
1) The way the output is displayed using characters gives the effect that the colours look lighter then they should. Adjust the image brightness and contrast to make the input darker and have the colours stand out more, or with inverted (i.e. white text on black) output make it lighter. Hopefully I’ll come up with a way to compensate for this automatically.
2) I think that having the colour output with the text inverted looks much better then with the normal white background.
3) Try removing the space and punctuation from the valid characters for the ramp (”Edit/Ramps/Valid Characters…”).
I might try to do a tutorial for colour output.
Localization
Here’s an example translation file to localize the program into American English. Save it to the same directory as the exe file and call it translation.xml.
http://www.jmsoftware.co.uk/files/translation.xml
The full list is here: http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml
History: http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml?view=log
Other
Some people complained, so if you don’t want the program checking for a new version each time it starts up (which just tries to grab a tiny xml file from the sourceforge page) you can now turn it off without leaving the program. Go to ‘Edit/Edit Settings…’ and uncheck the ‘New Version Check’ box, then press ‘Ok’ and go to ‘Edit/Save Settings as Default’.
I considered having it turned off as default since I added the manual version check (’Help/Check for a New Version’), but who would turn it on?
Also, please consider donating if you enjoy this program, or at least help spread the word about it. Having the external links removed from Wikipedia ASCII Art pages really hurt the traffic to this site (and the money per ad click has gone down the toilet).
Ascii Generator dotNET 0.9.1 released
Bug fix (which has literally been there forever), plus a whole new way of choosing how to save the files.
Changes:
Added toolstrip with buttons to rotate and flip the input image
Replaced the different save menu items with a dialog
Set Accept (enter) and Cancel (escape) buttons for edit settings and text magnification forms
Fixed ctrl codes being enabled/disabled when they shouldn't be if the menu hasn't been opened
Translation file changes are here.
Ascii Generator dotNET 0.9.0 Released!
Check out the previous post for details about how to translate the program into other languages. If you do a translation, please let me know so I can add it for other people to use.
Changes:
Improved speed of applying convolution matrix (used in output filters)
Added saving to an image with colour
For images with transparency, the transparent area is now black if output was inverted on load
Changed to no longer prompt to save after saving as an image
Added colour print and print preview
Added loading resource strings from an xml file
Added translation filename to the variables and settings file
Added form to change some basic settings in the program
Improved speed of automatically generating ascii ramps
Moved updating the settings into the Variables class
Moved processing xml nodes into a new class
Added saving as a nfo file
Localized the batch conversion log
Removed depreciated Hidden property from the widgets
Moved saving the settings into the Variables class
Changed the settings file to read and write to settings.xml
Fixed Ramp dropdown box being cut off
Moved Brightness/Contrast controls into a separate control
Replaced brightness/contrast textboxes with numeric up down boxes
Added saving as colour text and images in a batch conversion
Added a menu item to check for a new version
Fixed current output directory changing back to the default directory after saving
Added right-click menu item to reset the brightness/contrast widgets
Next version: Globalization + Save and Print Colour Images
Just as a heads-up, the next version of the program will include the ability to translate it into whatever language you want (or change words to make them sound rude).
Originally I planned to use the inbuilt globalization stuff, but it’s unbelievable how complex it makes everything. Instead I’ve come up with my own easy system that piggybacks on the existing resource class and loads the strings from an external xml file.
The current full list of translation strings is here:
http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml
You can use any or all of these by translating the strings inside the
It will also finally come with saving to colour image files, and printing in colour. Which was much harder then the translation stuff.
I’m not sure whether to have the version number as 0.8.3 or 0.9.0. Maybe 0.8.5?
Plus, I’ve changed http://www.jmsoftware.co.uk/ into a blog so I can start posting more off topic stuff without cluttering this one up, and I hope to start posting regularly soon. It also hosts a few random little programs.