{"id":3856,"date":"2026-07-17T18:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2026-09-03T13:37:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T17:37:01","slug":"adding-thedraw-fonts-to-taag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/17\/adding-thedraw-fonts-to-taag\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding TheDraw Fonts to TAAG"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TAAG<\/a> now has full support for TheDraw font files, color and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A little over 12 years ago<\/a>, someone sent me a zip of old ANSI art fonts. I converted a handful of them to FIGlet fonts (basically the ones that didn’t use color), and added them into TAAG. I have always wanted to revisit the format though, as there were so many fonts created for it, and earlier this year I decided to go back and properly add support for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

TheDraw?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TheDraw was a 1980s DOS app for creating ANSI art. You can think of ANSI art as ASCII art’s more handsome sibling: an extended 256-character set instead of ASCII’s 128, along with 16 colors. Though nowadays ASCII art is made with unicode and text can be colored however you want, so these benefits are moot. But back in the days these benefits distinguished it from ASCII art. Artists made ANSI art fonts in the 80’s in the same way they would later make ASCII art fonts for FIGlet in the 90’s and on into today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TheDraw’s font format had the advantage of color and more characters, but it was less sophisticated, and it lacked features such as kerning. It also had hard limits in certain areas. For example, fonts couldn’t be larger than 12 characters high. I would argue FIGlet’s format is better, but I do really like the color and art style of TheDraw’s fonts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TAAG update<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I silently made the first update for this several months ago, adding the new fonts to the drop-down list but not to the Test All page. Then in May I added them to the Test All page. I haven’t heard a peep from people who use the app, but hopefully these new fonts provide some enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know it seems really late for me to do a write-up on this, and I’d meant to post a blog or make a video sooner, but life has been crazy (though then again, when is life not crazy?). Additionally, videos kind of need a story, and I couldn’t figure out how to frame this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also updated<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AOL macro fonts in TAAG are fixed. You can now see them again in their full ’90s glory. That’s a longer story for another day though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Also, the Arial ASCII Art Gallery<\/a> has gotten some major updates and will be getting more in the near future, but again, a story for another time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAAG now has full support for TheDraw font files, color and all. A little over 12 years ago, someone sent me a zip of old ANSI art fonts. I converted a handful of them to FIGlet fonts (basically the ones that didn’t use color), and added them into TAAG. I have always wanted to revisit … Continue reading Adding TheDraw Fonts to TAAG<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,3,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aol","category-general-news","category-web-apps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3856"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3917,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions\/3917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patorjk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}