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Answers to frequently asked questions in the ASCII art discussion groups Author: Matthew Thomas Version: 2.0 Last changed: 1998-05-10 NOTE: If you are new to Usenet News, please read the messages in news.announce.newusers before posting to any discussion groups. This FAQ is regularly posted to the newsgroups news:alt.ascii-art, news:rec.arts.ascii, and news:alt.ascii-art.animation. It is also available at the following locations:
1. What is ASCII art? ASCII art is any kind of artwork -- pictures, charts, cartoons, whatever -- drawn with the characters in the ASCII character set. The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character set is a set of 128 characters (0 to 127) which are standard on almost all types of computer. The only characters used in ASCII art are those with the values 32 to 126, which are shown below, and 13, which represents a carriage return (new line). The other characters in the ASCII character set (0-12, 13-31, and 127) are control codes for representing things such as `end of file' and `backspace'; they should not be used in ASCII art.