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ATE – Ansi Text Editor 1.0Beta

Categories: ANSI / ASCII, TEXT ART, TOOL
Comments: No Comments
Published on: June 18, 2014
I finally got around to write this tool. It was on my to-do list for quite some time now. I already wrote ANSI converters (link 2) and most recently a Font Tool for the old MS-DOS ANSI Editor TheDraw (Font Tool Homepage), so it was only a natural progression to write something like this editor. ANSI Text Art Editor is an ANSI text editing tool very similar to PabloDraw, ACiDDraw, TheDraw, TundraDraw, TetraDraw or AnsiDraw, but unlike the better half of them for Windows 32bit and 64bit Computers and not MS DOS. For the folks who hate reading, visit the special ATE – Ansi Text Editor Home Page to download the Program. The Editor is still in Beta and not 100% stable. There are also bugs here and there which I am currently working on eliminating. Nevertheless, I think the current state of the tool allows me to make it public, especially to be able to get some feedback, comments and suggestions from you guys out there, who are still into good old ANSI/ASCII Text Art like me :). Post them here at the blog or use my sites contact form. You will recognize many features from the mentioned editors. This tool has some unique features of its own though, such as: ANSI Font System (to Create, Edit and Use Custom ANSI Fonts) similar to the one provided by TheDraw (but without the limitations in width/height). Import and Export option for TheDraw fonts. Smart Vertical & Horizontal Flip Tool Flat[…]
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RTN & Sidekiq Pro Art Requests

Categories: ANSI / ASCII, TEXT ART
Comments: No Comments
Published on: May 22, 2014
Hi There Folks, Carsten aka Roy/SAC speaking again. This time about Text Art (yeah, can you actually believe it? hehe). It has been ages.. or well at least 2-3 years that I fulfilled any art requests, but yeah, believe it or not, I actually managed to finish two requests for ASCII art, which I both received via PM at DeviantArt. The first one was a complete NFO file design for a group called “Reverse The Noob”, short RTN. Never heard of the group before, so no clue what kind of stuff they release. I decided to go with a Newskool ASCII design (I did that for both ASCII requests actually). Next to the logo I also created the NFO file body for the release information and member lists etc. The second request was somewhat commercial in nature, although I myself did not get paid for this (that’s a principle of mine, remember?*). It’s for a developer tool called “Sidekiq Pro“. Here is what the web site for the tool has to say about itself: Sidekiq Pro is a collection of useful functionality for the open source Sidekiq library. The tools costs $75 per year (subscription model). There you have it. * Note: I wanted to clarify this statement a bit more. Yes, I don’t do art for hire (getting paid to do it), however, I do accept and appreciate voluntary donations to support “the cause” and to help paying the site hosting fees etc. One does not have to do[…]
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.TDF TheDraw Fonts File Tool

Categories: Blogging
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Published on: April 29, 2014
After my blog post about the .TDF Fonts file specification is decided to write a little tool myself. I also have a large collection of TheDraw ANSI fonts to check out. The Editor “TheDraw” is also available for download here. To be able to run the Editor, you require an emulator for MS-DOS. I recommend DOSBOX, which is also available for download in my downloads section. .TDF Files are font files for TheDraw, the ANSI Text Editor for MS-DOS. The Editor comes with a tool for managing .TDF files called TDFONTS.EXE, but my tool provides some features that are not provided by the original tool. Also my tool is for Windows, meaning that you don’t need an MS DOS Emulator like DOSBOX etc. to run it. Main Tool Window The Features Instant Preview of the Font(s) (80×25 and 80×50 mode are available) Re-Arrange Order of Fonts in Collection (Including Sorting Fonts by Title) Add/Remove Fonts Rename FontsSimply double-click on the title column of the font. Change SpacingSimply double-click on the spacing column of the font. Change Font Type: “Outline” to “Color” or “Block“, “Block” to “Color” or “Color” to “Block“Simply double-click on the Type column of the font. Create a Fonts Collection of all your TheDraw fonts and save it as .TDFX proprietary Collection File Save Collection as .TDF Fonts File Collection Export Individual Fonts as .TDF Fonts File Export Font Preview as Image or Text Supported Image Formats: .PNG, .BMP, .JPG, .ICO, .GIF, .TIF, .EMF, .WMF Supported Text Formats:[…]
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TheDraw Fonts File (.TDF) Specifications

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Published on: April 23, 2014
I spend quite some time on my “FONTS COLLECTION” for the MS DOS ANSI/ASCII Text Editor “TheDraw“. The font file is in binary format and I wondered how it is structured to maybe write later some tools around it, like a Font Viewer for Windows, Converter to and from ANSI and stuff like that. Note that this is not an official specifications document, I reverse engineered it by testing, so there might be cases I am unaware of, although I am pretty confident that I covered everything about it. “TheDraw” Fonts Files have the extension “.TDF” (which is short for “TheDraw Font” duh :)). One .TDF Fonts file is by default designed as a “collection” of multiple fonts, even if it only holds a single font (like after exporting a single font to an extra file). It can hold up to 34 fonts. More are not possible, if used with TheDraw itself or with it’s external TDFONTS.EXE Fonts Editor utility. An empty fonts file without any font in it yet is always 232 bytes in size. The actual character data are always stored after those 232 bytes and can vary in size, depending on the size, type and complexity of the font characters. Every additional font added to the collection is 212 bytes long if without any character data. Font Header OffsetLengthDescriptionSample Value 0 1 Character 19 (13h) 13 1 18 Fix String TheDraw FONTS file 19 1 Character 26 (1Ah) 1A 20 4 Fix 4 Bytes Sequence Indicating the[…]
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… And More TheDraw ANSI & ASCII Fonts!

Categories: ANSI / ASCII, Collections
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Published on: April 19, 2014
Welcome back Folks, I posted only a couple weeks ago about the re-design and extension of my TheDraw ANSI/ASCII Fonts Collection. But since then, the collection was expanded significantly again. The total number of Fonts was boosted from 112 to 141 (That’s an addition of 29 Fonts)! About half of the new additions are fonts that I found in my existing archives scattered here and there. The other half are fonts that I created new myself. Many of those new fonts that I created for TheDraw are fonts that were created for the ASCII Font Tool “Figlet” using the FIGFonts Standard. Figlet only supports ASCII fonts (no Color) so I created colored versions of some of the fonts all by myself. Most of the new additions that I created are fonts that are complete or almost complete, which is usually rare for existing TheDraw fonts, meaning that next to standard letters and maybe numbers, also a lot of special and punctuation characters are available for those fonts. Check out the updated TheDraw Fonts Collection of mine here! Here is list of most of the additions that I created myself, previously not available as TheDraw Font anywhere. COLOSSAL.TDF.ZIP FRAKTUR.TDF.ZIP ROMANNC2.TDF.ZIP ROMANNS.TDF.ZIP ROMANNSC.TDF.ZIP BLOODLG.TDF.ZIP BLOODLGC.TDF.ZIP COSMIC.TDF.ZIP BLOODSMC.TDF.ZIP BLOODSML.TDF.ZIP GRAFFITI.TDF.ZIP LARRY3D.TDF.ZIP STRIPES.TDF.ZIP STRIPESS.TDF.ZIP USAFLAG.TDF.ZIP PEPPER.TDF.ZIP I hope you enjoy it, Cheers! Carsten aka Roy/SAC
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