ASCII Art Suite 💼

This is a toy implementation of a simple file format used for ASCII art.

The repository contains 2 applications, 1 ASCII Art generator and 1 ASCII Art viewer.

Header Format 📨

The file format (.aart) is built as follows.

Offset	Size	Description
0	4 Bytes	The character sequence „aart“ to specify valid header files
4	1	Number of rows
8	1	Number of columns
12	n Bytes	Rows * Columns of encoded ASCII payload data

Applications

ASCII Art generator 📟

This tool uses the "stb_image.h" header to create the ASCII art of any given image. The tool supports scaling of the ASCII art to allow for small/large ASCII art. The generator encodes the payload of the ASCII art by only toggling all bits of a byte, when the "#" is hit.

Currently, the character used for the ASCII art is the "#" character.

There are plans to update the file type to support other characters, too.

ASCII Art viewer 📺

This tool is used to view the generated ASCII art. It reads a given .aart file and decodes the payload to view the embedded ASCII art.

Development & Compilation 🛠️

Check out the repo:

git clone [email protected]:hackmac89/ascii_art_suite.git

Use the given Makefile in the projects root directory, to compile the suite by typing:

make

See make help for the remaining Makefile targets (Docker building etc.)

Usage:

  make                          - Builds both ASCII art generator and viewer
  make clean                    - Removes compiled files
  make -C generator             - Builds only the generator
  make -C viewer                - Builds only the viewer
  make docker-build-generator   - Builds the docker image for the ASCII art generator
  make docker-build-viewer      - Builds the docker image for the ASCII art viewer
  make valgrind                 - Runs valgrind on the generator and viewer applications
  make help                     - Shows this message

Demo time 💿

Here, we just use an arbitrary example image and convert it into an aart file, display its hex contents and display it back in the ASCII art viewer application.

FAQ 🤷🏻‍♂️

Why using a submodule to include the external "stb_image.h" header, instead of using cURL/wget when building?

I did not want to check in the several thousand line long header file and I always wanted to use a submodule in one of my repos, so why not? Furthermore, I only pull the versioned "stb_image.h" version instead of pulling the whole STB library.

...

TODO 🔨

• Add a separate PR workflow with a valgrind check and create a pr comment if these checks fail
• Finalize valgrind integration

Future plans 🗒️

• Add header bitfield used for flags for future updates, e.g. flags for additional options (checksums, additional ASCII mapping etc. pp.)

Thanks to 🙏

• STB library