ASCII Art

ASCII art is the process of creating (or tracing) an image with only the use of text characters and symbols. This is typically done in a simple text editor by typing characters in rows to create an image instead of readable language. ASCII art ranges from simple line "drawings" to full blown graphics, complete with depth and shading. The technique is similar to the newspaper halftone printing method where small dots of different sizes but the same color value are arranged to create an impression of a photograph. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange and is used to encode text representation for keyboard characters. ASCII art can be seen all over the web on forums and blogs. There are several ASCII art generators on the web that will programmatically reproduce a image in this manner.