Beta 6.1 Released 9


Download it here


Changes:
Improved the accuracy of variable width conversions
Improved speed of variable width conversions
Added support for white text on black with variable width fonts
Fixed incorrect output when using white text on black and font changes


9 thoughts on “Beta 6.1 Released

  • Dwayne

    Loving it. I’m yet to make a really good gen yet for the best fonts… hope to devote some time to it.

    As far as the borders go, I still think they’re totally fine as they are. However, you could have the option I suggested before of monospace variable width where the user selects a width and it inserts characters of that width into the valid chars dialogue?

    All the numbers, for example, are monospace in Tahoma and Times New Roman (probably a lot of other var width fonts) The numbers alone are not very detailed in output, but decent, and they give a vague outline and when/if you intend on introducing colour into the conversions as well, it’ll all look good and detailed; with the added benefit of not having any jagged edge. Plus, the monospaced variable width chars might vary in terms of detail against different fonts.

    So I’m thinking a width selector in the valid characters box, starting from 1 width when it’s activated, adjust it until the person finds a combination of valid characters that he/she likes?

  • Jonathan

    I could probably do a check if the valid characters are all the same width in a variable width font then process it as fixed width, but I don’t know if the output would be any good. In 12pt Times New Roman the characters with a width of 8 are: “#01234156789bdkopq$”, and the 4 pixels characters are ” ,.;fjt”, but neither set gives particularly good results if you use it in for the valid characters,

  • Dwayne

    I’m not sure, but I think that Divide-by-Zero error may be similiar to an Illegal Operation Exception 10H error I’ve been experiencing these last couple of days on two programs. It’s a similiar sort of random crash (and on a Microsoft help site for msworks, it mentions it’s a divide-by-zero error); just different error box and error. I’ve just done some looking up and found that it may be the printer driver that was causing it, anyway I deinstalled that since it was no longer in use. I haven’t been able to replicate a crash yet.

  • Dwayne

    Don’t know if the exception is related, but just tried an older version of ASCGen and the divide-by-zero is still there.

  • Dwayne

    The ? character kind of adds to images in Times New Roman size 12. Sometimes, with or without, but it is the darkest shade for that font.

    “,.;acemnrsuvwxzfltI?” (give or take the space) is the present gen I use for it.

  • Dwayne

    Couldn’t figure out that above problem so I just reinstalled Windows. I still suspect it’s related.

    With respect to these Times New Roman images, I put the results through Bk Replace ’em and surround the characters with colour tags. The colours are dependant on the black and white shades, so I just use colours which work somewhat as a coloured black and white. The forum I post on only has about 8 colours, and only several shades I graded white-yellow-orange-red-green-black. It just accentuates the black and white font limitations.

    A screenshot:
    http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a307/Dwayne2005/zombie.gif

    I was doing something similiar pre-b6.0 with numbers (monospace). So, although limited in output I was thinking the monospace variable width characters would produce some good decent results in coloured output… plus, gives the flat right edge in such generations?

  • Jonathan

    Remember that each character represents a greyscale value, and each greyscale value can represent a wide range of colours. If you want to add colour you’d need to go back to the original image, resize it to match the text image size, reduce the colours using a palette containing the ones you need, and somehow apply that to the text. Easy…

    I don’t like ? :/

  • Dwayne

    It takes a little while for your eyes to adjust to ?, maybe what helped was that I added it in when I could barely keep my eyes open… next morning, I realized it kind of looked a bit distracting. But I’ve worked with it a bit and I don’t like the results without it anymore.

    One thing about the coloured software end conversions is that I can’t really use them and apply them to the forum. I can’t figure out a replace string that will encompass a range of hexadecimal colour codes. Probably not possible. So, I have even if there was software end coloured conversion I wouldn’t be able to use it where I post. I wouldn’t be able to adjust it to the forums markup language, I don’t think. I could only think it would be possible if the software enabled you to specify the colours. Maybe I could do it with The GIMP and run it through JASCII? :/

  • Dwayne

    Okay, I reduced the colours down to 8 and converted it using Ascii.art (as that version allows me to import a text file, ie. AscGen results) and replaced the HTML with colour tabs. I think the black and white coloured effect is far better, at least with that amount of colours and the size I was using (100 x Times New Roman 12, or 88 characters)

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