ztext

The "z" stands for Seth.

Description

This project is a ASCII art tool. Point it at a PNG, and it'll convert that PNG into ASCII. Then it converts the ASCII back into a PNG, because massive text files are a bit unwieldy.

Known Issues

• Scaling down your image is likely going to be necessary. When dealing with extremely large files, an unusable file is produced

Use

Here's a Bash script that implements ztext.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# ./example.sh

color= background= scale= gradient= luminance= sampling=
while getopts "c:b:s:S:g:l:h" opt; do
    case $opt in
        c) color=$OPTARG ;;
        b) background=$OPTARG ;;
        s) scale=$OPTARG ;;
        S) sampling=$OPTARG ;;
        g) gradient=$OPTARG ;;
        l) luminance=$OPTARG ;;
       \?) continue
    esac
done
shift $((OPTIND - 1))
files=("$@")

for file in "${files[@]}"; do
    filename=${file##*/}
    stem=${filename%.*}
    suffix=${filename##*.}

    target="./out/$stem-$gradient-$color-$background-$luminance-$sampling.$suffix"
    ./ztext "$file" --target=$target --scale=$scale --sampling=$sampling \
        --gradient=$gradient --luminance=$luminance --color=$color \
        --background=$background
done

./example.sh -c green -b black -s 0.065 -S 1 -g profoak -l quadratic

TODO

1. Full 1:1 color mapping
2. Pixel Shaders abd animations
3. GIF, MP4, and JPEG outputs
4. SVG input