I'm a visual kind of person, when I talk and try to explain something, my hands describe shapes in the air in front of me.
It's easier for me to think about something abstract if I can imagine it in terms of a shape or as a series of connecting points in some imaginary space.
The Halfbakery is a beautiful thing. It's clean here, and I can surf it without arousing too much bossular suspicion. It is however (like much of the quality stuff available online) largely text-based.
Don't get me wrong; I love a bit of text. But I occasionally feel the need to express myself more thoroughly. If I could draw, I would, but I still doubt my style would fit in with the cleanliness here - and its a lot of palaver to submit drawings just when I want to explain something in an anno...
So - what about allowing a fixed-width tag so that I can create my own ASCII monospaced illustrations in my ideas or annotations!
It should* fit in with the look of the place already, and provide a piece of functionality that people can explore and become creative with.
I think most browsers have a suitably standard monospace font that most ASCII creations would be able to convey the original intentions of the poster.
Yes we can attempt these things at the moment, but it's not monospace, and we have no idea about how these things might look to our flour-dusted brethren(and sistren of course).
N.B. I would have made the explanation of this idea shorter if I'd been able to accurately depict what I mean in a monospaced ASCII illustration.
*Subjectively biased opinion.-- zen_tom, Mar 17 2005 Can anyone see my silent, smiling face half way down? Silence_20groupI've no idea how it came out, but to me it looks as if I'm looking in the mirror. [Ling, Mar 17 2005] Use something like this http://admin3.imagi...transcript=&_lscid=GE online doodle tool (requires Flash) [Worldgineer, Mar 17 2005] jpg to ascii http://jpg2asc.hierklikken.com/Does exactly what it says on the tin [zen_tom, Mar 17 2005] ASCII art on HB Pong_20on_20the_20Beach_20Eventwithout a monospace font, by thumbwax [rrr, Mar 29 2006] I think there are programs that turn drawings into ASCII text. But I think you are right that the spacings are potentially different for each user. Difficult.-- Ling, Mar 17 2005 I agree, that would make it much easier. However, I predict that this idea will be covered with works from variable-space ASCII artists. Wheres thumbwax?-- Shz, Mar 17 2005 Using text for graphics is a terrible band-aid solution to start with, not to mention being hard to create. It seems a web doodle program would work best, if we could find a good one. I've linked to a fairly robust doodle page.-- Worldgineer, Mar 17 2005 [World] I love that link - and may actually try making use of the collaborative options it provides, but it's still an effort to go to another page, start, work, and then save a session, come back here and provide a link when I could switch on my monotype and slap in a graph of velocity vs time directly into my annotation.
You are absolutely right about text-based graphics being band-aid etc, but in the absence of an integral scribble-pad within the annotation box, a band-aid solution is the only one we have available.
Oh and [Ling] Your silent face turned out great. Also, see link for an image to ascii converter...-- zen_tom, Mar 17 2005 [Ling], loved your smiley face.-- zeno, Mar 18 2005 Thumbwax made a beautiful anno in ASCII art in my Pong on the beach idea, even without a monospace font. See link.-- rrr, Mar 29 2006 I must admit it is very good, but it cheats in that features on the far-right (the right-most bat) are not only few, but spaced at the end of a row of minus-signs - Hats off to Mr Wax, but no cigar.-- zen_tom, Mar 29 2006 random, halfbakery