Text Artist beta v1.0.1

Please use Screen Resolution no less than 1280*800

Please read topic 4. How to use ASCII art?

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1. Change Log:
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v1.0.1 Beta:

1. Compatible with Window XP (XP Bugs Fix)
2. Other bug fixes.

v1 Beta:

First Version

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2. Introduction:
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Text Artist is a small program for making ASCII arts. User can draw image or open bitmap(.bmp) image and turn it into ASCII art. Creating an ASCII art takes lot of skill and time, so I wrote Text Artist so that user can just draw image and then convert it to ASCII art easily.

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3. What is ASCII art?
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Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art

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4. How to use ASCII art?
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Though the program looks simple, some of the fuction might not be obvious. If you read this, you will save some time and frustration.

Text Artist has two mode: 1. Drawing and 2. Bitmap

1. Drawing mode:

In this mode, user can choose various objects like Pen, Eraser, Ellipse etc to draw some image. Drawing mode looks very simple, just select an object and start drawing. But I am going to tell you about not so visible function that might be useful.

First the size of the Pen(for Pen, Line, Rect, Ellipse and Eraser) can be changed. How? Using UP and DOWN keys from keyboard. Size of the pen is given in ToolBox. For example, when you open Text Artist, on the top of ToolBox you can seen "Pen 6". "Pen" is the object that is currently selected while "6" is the size of Pen. Remember, to change the size of the Pen, Main Window(Canvas) should be on focus. Pen Size can be increased upto 50 and decreased upto 1. If you change the size of Pen, Skip Pixel may need to be changed accordingly. I will teach you to skip pixel later.

Click on "Tools" on menu and you will see a Menu Item "Hollow Brush". If "Hollow Brush" is checked, transparent Ellipse/Rectangle will be drawn. If unchecked, an opaque Ellipse/Rectangle will be drawn. Experiment youself to see what happens, first draw a line and then draw a Ellipse or Rectangle on top of that line with "Hollow Brush" checked. Then do the same with "Hollow Brush" unchecked.

Another invisible feature of Text Artist is user defined Start and End Points. What are Start and End Points? Well, Start point is from where Text Artist starts to convert image on the canvas to ASCII art and End Point is where it stops to convert. To define Start point, point the mouse cursor to a point on Canvas from where you want Text Artist to convert the image, then press and hold S-Key on you keyboard and then click right mouse button and release the S-Key. A message box appears asking if you want to select that point as Start point or not, and click on Yes. To define End Point, do the same as above but instead of holding S-Key, hold E-Key.
What it does is it creates a rectangle(invisible) using Start and End Point. Straight line between Start and End Point being one of the diagnol of the rectangle. For example, if you choose a Start Point on Cavas that happens to be (5,5) and End Points happens to be (10, 10). The vertices of rectangles will be SP(5,5), EP(10,10), (5,10), 10,5). SP and EP are user defined while (5,10) and (10,5) are not and line between those points are another diagnol of rectangle. And the image that is bounded between the rectangle will only be converted in output file.
Remember, coordinates of Start Point must be less than coordinates of End Point. For example, if you set Start Point to (10,10) and End Point to (5,5), error message will be shown.
This feature is also available in Bitmap Mode.


2. Bitmap Mode:

This mode starts after you Open a Bitmap Image. You won't be able to draw in this mode and ToolBox will remain hidden.


Settings:

If you click on "Process" on menu, you will see a Menu Item "Settings". Click on it and a Settings dialog box will appear.You can define different kinds of settings. 
In "Bitmap" group box there are "Use only one character" check box and "Which character" text box. These settings that are in "Bitmap" group can be used only for Bitmap Mode. If you check "Use only one character" check box, a character in "Which character" text box will be used for ASCII art.
In "Drawings" group box there are "Character for black Pixel" and "Character for white Pixel" text box. These settings that are in "Drawings" group can be used only for Drawing Mode. I think it's obvious what these settings do, first one defines character for black pixels while second defines character for white pixels for ASCII art.
In "Skip Pixel" group box there are two text boxes, "Horizontal" and "Vertical". Let me tell you what Skip Pixels are. Skip Pixel are number of pixel/s user wants to skip in a single loop. For instance, if user sets skip pixel to 1, each and every pixels on the Canvas is read, if set to 2, first 2, then 4, then 6, then 8 and so on is read. Default is set at "Horizontal" - 3 and "Vertical" - 4. That mean, Canvas is scanned for pixel in this way:

0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 and so on

4

8

12

16

20

24

so on

In Bitmap Mode, Skip Pixel are automatically set according to width and height of Bitmap Image, but user can define it manually from Settings.

In "Font" group box, there are also 2 text boxes, "Font Size" (Size of font of ASCII art) and "Line Height" (Height of line of ASCII art). 


To convert your Drawing or Bitmap to ASCII art, goto Process->Convert. ASCII art will be saved in HTML format.

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Contact:

www: http://sourceforge.net/projects/textartist/
Email: pra2nepal@yahoo.co.uk

Have Fun!!!
Prads