Official Re-Launch of RoySAC.com

I made the final touches on the site today. Everything related to ASCII and ANSI Text art is now moved to its new home. In addition to the move were several design changes made and more content was added as well. Existing content was updated and in some cases cconsiderably extended.

I am proud to announce today the official Re-Launch of RoySAC.com.

The new site is completely dedicated to oldskool BBS and underground ASCII and ANSI art. Online galleries with hundreds of art pieces, articles, ascii tutorial, ascii editor and viewer downloads, related DVDs and books and background information.

I submit the news about the Re-Launch to Digg.com. If you like the Site and have a Digg.com account, go to the entry about the launch at digg and digg the news story.

Parallel did I launch an AdCast Campaign at deviantART.com. An Ad that promotes the new Site will be displayed 1,250,000 times across the deviantART Website during the next week.

If you have any comments or suggestion for the new site, let me know. I am open to any suggestions. Is there anything that is missing that you would like to see on the site in the future?

Thank you for your interest in oldskool ASCII and ANSI Text art
I appreciate that

Cheers,
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Blog Moved

Quick News. I moved my Blog from Cumbrowski.com to the new RoySAC.com domain (where I moved already all my pages about ANSI and ASCII Text art to less than 2 weeks ago).

The new Blog URL is http://www.RoySAC.com/blog

The Feedburner Feed URL did not change. Also all existing Links to the Old Address should work without problem. I 301-redirected everything from the old address to the new one.

While I was moving the Blog, did I add the option to subscribe to my Blog via Email as little form in the upper right hand corner of my Blog. The old FeedBlitz subscriptions should continue to work in the near future, but I would suggest you sign up again at my blog and unsubscribe from FeedBlitz, just in case.

If you notice anything weird, let me know. Cheers!

ASCIIs that are NOT ASCIIs - or are they?

It wasn't the first time that somebody said to me, that one of my "ASCIIs" is labeled wrong as such and should be labeled "ANSI".

He was referring to what is also called a "Block ASCII". He is right and wrong with his comment and I will try to explain that.

The Extended IBM Code Pages (Code page 437 in the US and 850 in Germany) are part of the 8-Bit DOS character set and a proprietary (ANSI) standard by IBM.

The Extended Code pages include several special Graphical Characters that go beyond the 7-bit US-Character set of 128 characters supported by any other Operating System on the PC and Mainframe including MAC, Unix and Linux.

Those special Characters are considered ASCII by most people that owned and used a PC (especially the PC Demo, Underground Art and Warez Scenes). It was referred to them as "High ASCII" or "Block ASCII" although they are technically not ASCII. Only the 128 characters that are part of the 7-bit US-Character set are truly ASCII.

ANSIs on the other hand were called documents (are called) that used special Escape Sequences for color coding and other features.

These documents require the ANSI.sys driver being loaded in order to view the document correctly. ANSI.sys was not required to display "plain" "High ASCII" characters.

Because of that and the stupid name Microsoft gave the driver to display .ANS files (ANSI.sys), did Tens of thousand (if not more) of people on the IBM PC and compatible classify ASCII and ANSI the way they did for over 2 decades. Yes, labeled incorrectly.

No scientific debate will change the past and I won't start changing it either . The mislabeling was never corrected when there was the chance and when it became known, was it already too late. The incorrect terminology got already stuck in the mind of the users and could not be corrected anymore. Live with it!

Example. Here is a Logo that is indisputably an ASCII by all standards and definitions. This is the same Logo, the "Energy" NFO ASCII using "Block ASCII" or ""High ASCII" Style and now look at the "ANSI" Version of the "ASCII" using Escape Sequences for Color Coding.

I guess you have to live with this incorrectness as much as I did for over 15 years. If you want to learn more about the Styles used on the PC by the "Underground", have a look at my article "The three Styles of the Underground Text Art Scene".