Every now and then, documentation in source code requires an ASCII table. Sometimes table cells are spanning multiple rows or/and column.
TL;DR: The tools I tried did not support that, so manual labour is still needed.
Archive for the ‘ASCII art / AsciiArt’ Category
Generating ASCII-tables with spanning cells: manual labour still needed
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/28
Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Documentation Development, Encoding, Excel, Fun, HTML, Office, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | Tagged: 2 | Leave a Comment »
The Marvin the Paranoid Android 404-text
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/27
A while ago, I mentioned a 404-text simulating the Marvin the Paranoid Android as a side-line on a PlantUML post.
While categorising my ASCII art posts, I came across it, and it was published before I started archiving blog links in the Wayback Machine and Archive.is as much as possible.
Back during categorising, I added a few of those archived links, then made a note to research deeper.
So later, I got to that digging and did some digital spelunking, restored the text from an archived page and the underlying JavaScript code that simulated the text being typed on a “terminal”.
Then I did some more spelunking to the oldest usage I could find.
Here are the results:
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Posted in ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Fun, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Meme, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
EU Code Week on X: “🎨 Creative Corner: ASCII Art Challenge! 🎨 Let’s explore ASCII art! Use your coding skills to create a fun image using text characters. Share your masterpiece in the comments! Check out this guide to get started: Ready, set, create! #CreativeCoding”
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/26
This was a nice idea, but apparently not reaching the target audience:
[Wayback/Archive] EU Code Week on X: “🎨 Creative Corner: ASCII Art Challenge! 🎨 Let’s explore ASCII art! Use your coding skills to create a fun image using text characters. Share your masterpiece in the comments! Check out this guide to get started: … Ready, set, create! #CreativeCoding”
It pointed to step 4 in this Raspberry Pi project challenge: [Wayback/Archive] About me: ASCII art – Python challenge
Image via [WaybackSave/Archive] Tweet JSON / [Wayback/Archive] GVfE-_EXAAAv4R6.jpg:orig (1080×1080)
--jeroen
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Posted in Software Development, Development, Scripting, Python, Fun, ASCII art / AsciiArt | Tagged: CreativeCoding | Leave a Comment »
Best 404 page ever? : ProgrammerHumor
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/13
While doing some ASCII art blog-post drafts cleanup, I bumped into the (now deleted) [Wayback/Archive] Best 404 page ever? : r/ProgrammerHumor which pointed to the (also now deleted).
I got there via my (not deleted!) blog post Why I like PlantUML.
So I dug up the old archived copy of that PlantUML 404-page and made gist out of it.
I soon realised this was all encoded stuff, seemingly a mix of a ROT13 variation and some other shifting around.
Luckily the original page mentioned in the Reddit post was way easier, so I put that in a gist too.
Bot are below the blog-signature. Enjoy!
Oh, and the full text of course above the signature:
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Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, CSS, Development, Encoding, Fun, HTML, HTML5, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
This is nice #geekporn. ASCII Art that’s truly useful.…
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/12
I forgot both to archive this 10+ year old G+ post and schedule a blog post about it This is nice #geekporn. ASCII Art that’s truly useful.….
ASCII to bezier drawn images in a very clever way.
Found it back when searching for prior blog posts on ASCII art, because of my yesterday’s blog-post ASCII Art Archive, so here it finally is: the links about how to go from ASCII art to bezier images. Have fun!
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Posted in .NET, ASCII art / AsciiArt, C#, Delphi, Development, FireMonkey, Fun, ObjectiveC, Ruby, Software Development | Tagged: geekporn | Leave a Comment »
ASCII Art Archive, my own ASCII signature, plus many FIGlet and TOIlet ASCII font art links
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/11
Earlier this year I bumped into [Wayback/Archive] ASCII Art Archive
This brought back instant memories about ASCII art, so in the future expect af few unfinished blog-posts that were in my “if I ever get to it archive” about it.
Let me start with my very limited ASCII art I used in late 1980s and early 1990s newsgroup and LISTSERV mailing list signature I reconstructed from a comp.virus post¹ having some very old contact data²:
o _ _ _ _ _ voice: +31-2522-20908 (18:00-24:00 UTC)
/ (_' | (_) (_' | | snail: P.S.O.
__/ attn. Jeroen W. Pluimers
P.O. Box 266
jeroenp@rulfc1.LeidenUniv.nl 2170 AG Sassenheim
jeroen_pluimers@f521.n281.z2.fidonet.org The Netherlands
Shortly after that, my main source of income moved from the command-line to GUI based tools, so I temporarily kind of lost interest in command-line tools and customs. In that period FIGlet (see below) got created, which I totally missed (though I vaguely remember the 1.0 version being named newban).
The link at the start of this blog post not only pointed me to FIGlet, but also has a lot of examples (like some [Wayback/Archive] ASCII Art Logos – asciiart.eu) of which many by ASCII artist Joan Stark, and also links to JavaScript based tools:
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Posted in ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Encoding, Fun, History, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Retrocomputing, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
ASCII art generator: GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/27
Just in case I ever need ASCII art in a document again:
[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree
Via:
- [Wayback/Archive] Dbug on X: “”ASCII art” banners in the source code, Yea or Nay? “
- [Wayback/Archive] FIGlet – hosted by PLiG
FIGlet is a program for making large letters out of ordinary text
--jeroen
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History of ASCII Art
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/09/01
Geocities is long dead, but luckily a lot has been archived: [Wayback] Archive.is: History of ASCII Art with a very comprehensive history ranging from ancient old hand painted art to contemporary computer made illustrations.
Via: [Wayback/Archive.is] ASCII art: The roots of ASCII art
--jeroen
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Why I like PlantUML
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/06/13
Ever since I started using computers, I’ve liked text based solutions.
It’s one of the reasons I like PlantUML, but there are more. This is from a GitLab.com request I did a while ago: [WayBack/Archive] Please enable PlantUML rendering on gitlab.com both for standalone plantuml files and inside markdown plantuml code blocks (#2041) · Issues · GitLab.com / GitLab.com Support Tracker · GitLab (Edit 20250730: that issue now shows as a HTTP 404 as well – how fitting – [Wayback/Archive] Not Found)
one of my UML gripes from the past (I’ve been a software developer for about 30 years now) was that it wasn’t text based.
After bumping into PlantUML a long time ago in 2014 I’ve become a happy user of it for a few reasons:
- the language is text based (with many benefits I don’t need to explain)
- the tool is cross platform
- the tool is still actively developed all the way back from 2009
- after rendering, the arranging of elements is much better than I expected from an automated tool
Of course every now and then there is a glitch in complex diagrams, but I’ve found that professional tools:
- don’t do much better in fully-automated arranging
- become very cumbersome to use when you to manual arrangement
My first use initially was online, then in 2016 installed it on my Mac even submitting homebrew updates for it every now and then.
Oh: I love their 404 humour at http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/beta
Edit 20250731: Full 404 text below the signature because the PlantUML beta page does not show this 404 any more and the Reddit post with the full text got deleted.
Renderings can be in all sorts of graphics and text formats, for instance SVG, PNG, ASCII and Unicode.
Example:
plantuml -tsvg PSO.network-diagram.PlantUML.txt
--jeroen
via:
- [Archive.is/WayBack] 404 – Not Found
- There are many more, it I think this is Likely the original: [Archive.is/WayBack] ACM – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
full 404-text
The requested document is no more.
No file found.
Even tried multi.
Nothing helped.
Zilch.
Bupkis.
Not a sausage.
Maybe you just don’t have the required security clearance?
No, I am sure it is my fault.
I probably deleted it on my last backup.
I’m really depressed about this.
You see, I’m just a web server…
— here I am,
Marvin, as they call me,
brain the size of the universe,
trying to serve you a simple web page,
and then it doesn’t even exist!
Where does that leave me?!
I mean, I don’t even know you.
How should I know what you wanted from me?
You honestly think I can *guess* what someone I don’t even *know* wants to find here?
*sigh*
Man, I’m so depressed I could just cry.
And then where would we be, I ask you?
It’s not pretty when a web server cries.
And where do you get off telling me what to show anyway?
Just because I’m a web server,
and possibly a manic depressive one at that?
Why does that give you the right to tell me what to do?
Huh?
I’m so depressed…
I think I’ll crawl off into the trash can and decompose.
I mean, I’m gonna be obsolete in what, two weeks anyway?
What kind of a life is that?
Two effing weeks,
and then I’ll be replaced by a .01 release,
that thinks it’s God’s gift to web servers,
just because it doesn’t have some tiddly little security hole with its HTTP POST implementation,_
or something.
I’m really sorry to burden you with all this,
I mean, it’s not your job to listen to my problems,
and I guess it is *my* job to go and fetch web pages for you.
But I couldn’t get this one.
I’m so sorry.
Believe me!
Maybe I could interest you in another page?
There are a lot out there that are pretty neat, they say,
although none of them were put on *my* server, of course.
Figures, huh?
Everything here is just mind-numbingly stupid.
That makes me depressed too, since I have to serve them,
all day and all night long.
Two weeks of information overload,
and then *pffftt*, consigned to the trash.
What kind of a life is that?
Now, please let me sulk alone.
I’m so depressed._
related
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Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Diagram, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Encoding, Fun, git, GitHub, GitLab, PlantUML, Software Development, Source Code Management, SVG, UML, Unicode, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Need to draw an ASCII diagram? ASCIIFlow is awesome:… (via: Ilya Grigorik – Google+)
Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09
ASCIIFlow.com: Brilliant!
And from the comments PlantUML which generates UML diagrams from text, of which the sequence diagrams can also be generated as ASCII (the others only as images).
Finally there is ditaa which goes from ASCII diagrams to images. The complete circle is done (:
--jeroen
via: Ilya Grigorik – Google+ – Need to draw an ASCII diagram? ASCIIFlow is awesome:….
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Posted in ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Diagram, Fun, LifeHacker, PlantUML, Power User, Software Development, UML | 2 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 