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Santa Claus in ASCII Text Art

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Have you been naughty or nice? What would Santa say?
Santa Claus in ASCII Text ArtThere are lots of Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas pictures done in ASCII art. Christmas time seems to have the biggest collection of such art. I think it’s because this artistic method is so easy to send in an email. Or, it used to be. Now HTML email has messed things up and you need to send the ASCII art in an image file instead of just the plain text copied into an email. You can also send the art in a txt file, attached to an email. But, you must let people know what you are sending in an attached file.

Santa Claus has become a big part of Christmas, very commercialized. Not surprising there are plenty of ASCII art creations of Santa. Some people colour the art. It takes some extra time and knowledge of HTML codes. Santa does look nice in the traditional red and white rather than the black, white, and greyscale of standard ASCII text.

Happy Holidays!

Is ASCII Art Open Source?

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Some people get peeved because I don’t offer my art in a plain text file. I don’t like having my ASCII ripped off, as it so often and easily is. So, for the past few years, I only post an image file (a .png screen capture from NotePad usually). It still gets ripped off because people like to assume any ASCII art is free, like free software in price and availability. One person even claimed, “no one owns ASCII art”.

I don’t want people to assume it is free. Not free in price. Not free in value and not freely available to be copied or taken. Each person is different in this way. I do not see my ASCII art as free software. I’m not that generous. Mostly, I don’t like feeling taken advantage of when someone else is using my art and it makes me angry when it is being sold, or given away in a product without any consideration to myself. Financial consideration yes, also at the very least, an artist credit. How stingy is someone who takes something offered to them, claims it as their own and sells it at a profit to themselves only?

I would rather ASCII art was open source (the image file which at least still has my artist initials rather than the text file so easily “edited”). Any image online is pretty much open source, whether the artist likes it or not. Watermarks can be removed with software or scissors.
If it were possible, I wouldn’t have ASCII Art as open source either. Respect the ASCII artist, any artist, don’t steal art! You may want to think it is all open source, the person who created the art probably does not see it that way.

Another Look at Formatting Code for Posting ASCII Art

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Another Look at Formatting Code for Posting ASCII ArtI found a blog posting ASCII art in small text files, cleanly. Quite a nice achievement. I took a look at the code and copied it, but it did not work the same way for me. So, I am looking into it. There may be more to the code than shows on the blog post HTML code. Or, I will see if I can find a way to post a plain text file embedded in the post.