ASCII art in Ubuntu

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 8  8d8b. .d88 8 .d8b. Yb  dP 8   8    8    8 88b. 8   8 8d8b. w8ww 8   8
 8  8P Y8 8  8 8 8' .8  YbdP  8b d8    8b..d8 8  8 8b d8 8P Y8  8   8b d8
888 8   8 `Y88 8 `Y8P'   YP   `Y8P8    `Y88P' 88P' `Y8P8 8   8  Y8P `Y8P8

There are two ASCII art viewers in the repostory. Aview and Cacaview. Both are CLI programmes, so you have to open a terminal. Exploring the world of ASCII art is very 1999, but the retro-adventure is well worth the time and effort. You'll also find the venerable Lynx Browser, which is an ASCII browser for paper-thin net browsing, and a whole bunch of tools for generating ASCII images which could do with a brush up.

Try Cacafire a port of AALib's aafire which displays burning ASCII art flames or the Cacademo. Wish there was an easier method for creating ASCII video. I can't help thinking that there are lot of places which haven't been explored in the world of Alphanumerics and ASCII art is about to enjoy a resurgence as a design statement.

If you want to cut to the chase, Jerome Desmoulins website has an online ASCII art generator.

Or even better Sporkforge.com

Install figlet if you want an easy way to create ASCII "figs" on the command line.

sudo apt-get install figlet
figlet <text>

None of the above would be possible without the Ubuntu Forum discussion on the subject