U _____ u _ ____ U ___ u __ __ U _____ u _
__ __\| ___"|/|"| U /"___| \/"_ \/U|' \/ '|u\| ___"|/U|"|u
\"\ /"/ | _|"U | | u \| | u | | | |\| |\/| |/ | _|" \| |/
/\ \ /\ / /\ | |___ \| |/__ | |/__.-,_| |_| | | | | | | |___ |_|
U \ V V / U|_____| |_____| \____|\_)-\___/ |_| |_| |_____| (_)
.-,_\ /\ /_,-.<< >> // \\ _// \\ \\ <<,-,,-. << >> |||_
\_)-' '-(_/(__) (__)_")("_)__)(__) (__) (./ \.) (__) (__)(__)_)
To
PAT or JK's Text ASCII Art Generator (TAAG)
Now supporting over 300 different text art fonts!
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Updates
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May 17, 2009:
I've changed around the interface and made a few tweaks in how the program acts. My aim was to make this program simpler for
first time users to understand.
The main page of this site will have the most up to date news on this application.
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What are FIGlet Fonts? What are AOL Macro Fonts?
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FIGlet Fonts: You can get the full story here.
In a nutshell though, in the early 90's, a group of people came up with the idea of creating ASCII Art
text. They created a standard font format for the art and a program that would allow you to create
your own fonts and type in other people's fonts.
The phenomena spread and
100's of people created ASCII Art FIGlet fonts. These fonts make up the bulk of the fonts you see
in this program. They are created with monospaced text, and they should look good in any font size.
If you want to create your own FIGlet font, JavE is a
good freeware program that will allow you to save your work in the FIGlet font format.
AOL Macro Fonts: In the late 90's, little hacking programs known as "proggies" became popular in
the underground warez scene of AOL (examples:
AOHell and
Fate X).
As these programs became more popular, many begain to feature "Macro Shops", which were ASCII Art
development areas. The user could develop their own ASCII Art and then scroll the text in an AOL
chat room.
Most "Macro Shops" included a feature that allowed the user to type in large
ASCII Art text. These fonts had no connection to FIGlet fonts, and since they were developed for
AOL, they were made to look good in point size 10 of the Arial font (which AOL used at the time). This
was a non-monospaced environment, so these fonts were harder to create and they do not look good in
anything outside that point size and font. They also may appear different on different computers.
Back in the day I always thought these fonts showed a remarkable amount of artistic talent and they
are what inspired me to write this program (though after discovering FIGlet fonts I find many of them to be
just as good if not better than the AOL fonts). I did my best to track down as many of the AOL fonts as I could. What you see listed here
is what I was able to find (they were remarkably hard to find - and I thank everyone who helped
me out!).
If you like the AOL ASCII Art style, you can find more of it here: AOL ASCII Art.
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What is "Smush Letters Together"?
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This is a feature of FIGlet fonts. "Text smushing" moves the letters close together, and in some cases, causes
them to overlap. To see this in action, select the "Standard" font, type some text and then check/uncheck this
option. Because FIGlet allows the font author to control text smushing, different fonts will have different
responses to the smushing option.
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Know of any other cool ASCII sites?
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I'm a member of the ASCII Arts Ring, which links to a lot of creative ASCII Art websites. You can check out other members sites below.
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