The formal guide to IRC ASCIIing

by berry and Pedrobear


lol this took a long time to make so use it well
if u want ur client added or
if you can help by fixing or adding things msg brr @ irc.gorf.us #chats
if you have criticism or w/e then ur probably some loser nerd who strips colors and kicks for ascii and stuff and idgaf wawt u have to say
this is wat irc is all about:

Contents

1 Introduction
    1.1 ASCIIs
    1.2 Charsets
    1.3 Fonts
    1.4 Colors/formatting
    1.5 Scrolling
2 Configuring Clients
    2.1 mIRC
        2.1.A NNScript
        2.1.B nbs-irc
        2.1.C ircN
    2.2 XChat
    2.3 Irssi
    2.4 WeeChat
3 Configuring Terminals
4 Making ASCIIs
5 References/Further Reading

Introduction


Here's just some basic information about ASCIIs, Unicode, fonts, colours, codes and scrolling. For more detailed information on these topics, head to the References/Further Reading section. If you think you know it all then make sure your: client is set up correctly.

ASCIIs

ASCII art or simply ASCII (pronounced ass-key), originally referred to any form of picture or art which was drawn using printable characters from the ASCII charset:

[space]!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

It's now commonly used to refer to any sort of text-based art such as IRC art, even though it may include control codes/characters and non-ASCII characters. Most ASCIIs require fixed-width fonts to be viewed properly, just like images, which are made up of pixels of the same size. ASCIIs on IRC may be plain text (i.e. colorless) or formatted with mIRC colour codes. There are some who like to call ASCIIs `ANSI art' or `ANSIs' just because they utilize colour codes. It's incorrect to do so as ANSI art is quite different, using it's own extended character set and it's own colour codes, which are different from mIRC colour codes. Also ANSI art isn't under a lot of restrictions IRC is under, some ANSI art wouldn't even be able to be converted for IRC use. It may not be 100% correct to call IRC art `ASCIIs' but it's a more acceptable and widespread term.

Charsets

A charset (character set), sometimes called character encoding, consists of a collection of characters with a code linked to each. An example is the ASCII charset (shown above) which links characters with a number:

65 - A   ...   91 - [
66 - B   ...   92 - \
67 - C   ...   93 - ]

The Unicode (UTF-8, the most popular encoding for IRC) charset should replace the ASCII charset in the coming years as it contains 100,000s of characters as opposed to ASCII's 128, while retaining backwards compatibility with files encoded in ASCII. Without Unicode support on IRC, many non-ASCII characters such as special punctuation, or characters used in 2chan-style emoticons, wouldn't be displayed or would be seen as boxes/question marks/placeholders. The main problem with Unicode is programs and fonts not supporting it fully, correctly or by default, although most modern software does it properly nowadays. Some examples of Unicode as used on IRC are shown below, images of them are included since some browsers/fonts may not support Unicode properly:

 Text  What it should look like DescriptionMore info
ellipsis http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2026/ 
check markhttp://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2713/
 (´ω`)っ旦~  kawaii face holding tea 4/8 characters are Unicode ones

Fonts

The best kind of font or typeface for IRC is one that's monospaced (fixed-width) and uses Unicode. Unicode fonts contain a wider range of characters, while monospaced fonts have all characters be the same size. It's hard to find a font which is both and also looks good. Use this list of monospaced fonts, this list of Unicode fonts and Google to find one that suits you. Arial Unicode MS has 38,917 characters compared to DejaVu Sans' 5,467, but this is how they compare with ASCIIs:

 DejaVu Sans Mono  Arial Unicode MS 

Some ASCIIs don't look deformed in variable-width fonts because they use the same letter across the entire ASCII, but their proportions will still be skewed. It's also impossible for a single font to have all of Unicode so the amount of characters in a font shouldn't be used as a measure of how good said font is. What is important is that it includes the parts of Unicode you often use. A recommended font is DejaVu Sans Mono. ALSO CONSOLAS IS SEXY!

Colors/formatting

IRC has no standard for colours, so a lot of clients will display them differently from each other. This is stupid if you spent your time picking the correct colours for your shark ASCII and then someone calls it red... So we picked the most popular format and that was Dj Khaled Mardam-Bey's:

   RGB Values  HSL Values 
 Colour  Code  Red  Green  Blue  Hue  Sat  Lum 
white 0 or 00 2552552551600240
black1 or 01000000
dark blue2 or 020012716024060
dark green3 or 03014708024069
red4 or 04255000240120
brown5 or 0512700024060
purple6 or 06156015620024073
orange7 or 07252127020240119
yellow8 or 08255255040240120
 lime green 9 or 091252080240119
teal10014714712024069
sky blue110255255120240120
blue1200252160240119
pink132550255200240120
dark gray141271271271600120
light gray152102102101600198

There are 16 colours to be used for IRC (0 to 15). Clients which support colours above number 15 usually use them for internal themes, or just loop the colours back (i.e. 16 is the same as 0), and thus these should not be used in ASCIIs. If any of the 0-15 colors on your IRC client are different from the above, then you're doing it wrong. There are also formatting codes for BOLD, ITALICS, UNDERLINE, REVERSE and a PLAIN code which clears colours and formatting. Not all format codes will work in every client, the most supported codes are colour, plain, bold and underline.

 Name  Character  (mIRC) Shortcut Key  Format  Output 
colourCTRL+K^C4samesame
 colour+bgcolor CTRL+K ^C4,11same same
boldCTRL+B^Bsamesame
italicCTRL+I^]samesame
underlineCTRL+U^_samesame
reverseCTRL+R^Vsamesame
plainCTRL+O^C4sa^Omesame

Scrolling

Scrolling is just sliding text or images like the credits at the end of a movie. On IRC it can refer to large amounts of text such as floods causing your screen to scroll. The action of entering ASCIIs into an IRC chat is also called `playing ascii' or `scrolling'. The computer requires quite a lot of effort when scrolling something long (in part due to shitty color handling). An example is bigmatix:

Hover over the box to view the scroll.

                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                

Scrolling may be choppy on your client, depending on your connection and how many colours the ASCII has. Some clients like XChat are known to freeze under the heavy load and some disconnect from the server like mIRC. This doesn't just apply to viewing ASCII, but scrolling them yourself may also cause problems unless proper throttling or timers are used. (And this is assuming you have the ability to flood on the IRCd you are connected to. Most servers will disconnect you for `flooding' a few lines unless you are opered or given a flood line, no matter what client you are using.)

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Configuring Clients


The following guides only offer the most basic instructions to make your IRC client ready for ASCIIing. Please read the notes written before each client's guide and make sure to read each entire step before carrying it out. To experience IRC and ASCII at its finest (or the finest your client can deliver it), pay extra attention to the steps and take the initiative to configure/tweak your client in ways not documented in this guide. Reading more about your client is also recommended.

mIRC

Note: If you're using an mIRC version older than 6.17 you need to update for Unicode support, and if you are using an mIRC version older than 7.xx you should update for improved Unicode support. This guide will demonstrate how to configure the popular version 6.34 (which should be similar to most 6.xx versions) and version 7.22 (which is the latest 7.xx version as of writing this guide). Also: If you're using NoNameScript, nbs-irc or ircN; you must complete their guides below AFTER completing the mIRC one.

Click here to open/close the mIRC guide

Click here to open/close the NNScript guide

Click here to open/close the nbs-irc guide

Click here to open/close the ircN guide

XChat

Note: XChat's features may vary between operating systems; and in Windows' case, there are various builds of XChat which also differ from each other. The following guide will demonstrate how to configure version 2.8.9 of the official XChat build on Windows (which is the latest official version for Windows as of writing this guide). The steps listed should still be compatible with most of the other XChat builds/operating systems.

Click here to open/close the XChat guide

Irssi

text

WeeChat

text

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Configuring Terminals


test

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Making ASCIIs


blah blah make sections for programs

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References/Further Reading


wiki:pPpPpPPpPppPPedia

Introduction

 1. Alt.Ascii-Art FAQ at Ascii Art Dictionary
 2. ASCII art at Wikipedia
 3. ASCII at Wikipedia
 4. ANSI art at Wikipedia
 5. ANSI escape code at Wikipedia
 6. Character encoding at Wikipedia
 7. UTF-8 at Wikipedia
 8. Unicode 6.0.0 at The Unicode Consortium
 9. Unicode 4.0 Character List at Columbia University
10. List of emoticons; Unicode characters at Wikipedia
11. Font at Wikipedia
12. Monospaced font at Wikipedia
13. Samples of monospaced typefaces at Wikipedia
14. Unicode typeface at Wikipedia
15. Wiki at DejaVu Fonts
16. Colors at mIRC
17. mIRC at Wikipedia
18. Color FAQ at Ircle
19. Tutorial: colors at mIRC Scripting Network
20. ASCII Control Characters at ALICE Bologna Group
21. Scrolling at Wikipedia

Clients

22. mIRC homepage
23. Unicode Support at mIRC Scripting Network
24. mIRC scripting language at Wikipedia
25. NoNameScript homepage
26. spaces at mIRC Internals Wiki
27. spacealt at mIRC Internals Wiki
28. XChat homepage
29. XChat SET Variables at Toxin
30. XChat Help Commands at Toxin
3x. MOTD at SandNET

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© brr 2011-2012