Hacker News: icecheese

New comment by icecheese in "16colo.rs – ANSI/ASCII art archive"

icecheese — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 18:53:45 +0000

ANSI art is still alive. We have some great modern editors, like Moebius, Durdraw, Icydraw and Pablodraw.

Some of them, like Durdraw, have fully embraced the extended Unicode character set (Utf-8 encoding instead of IBM's Code Page 437) and extended colors (xterm 256 colors instead of the traditional 16 colors), keeping ANSI art relevant and viable into the foreseeable future.

People are making logos and assets for their modern TUI apps and games, for example. Neovim themes. Ly display manager wallpapers.

I am personally glad to see that the medium is coming back into relevance. It was such a fun part of digital culture and creativity in the 90s. I hope the next generation gets to experience some of that thanks to modern tooling, instead of just observed as a relic of the past.

Edit: There is also a debate as to whether Unicode/Utf-8 characters with ANSI and Xterm escape codes constitutes "ANSI art." Some are calling it "UNSI art," or just modern terminal art.

Also, shout-out to the CP437 ANSI artists who continue to evolve the artistic styles of the medium, push the envelope, and release new ANSI packs. Hard, valuable work.

New comment by icecheese in "Durdraw – ANSI art editor for Unix-like systems"

icecheese — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 05:35:56 +0000

Dude is absolutely not serving a life sentence. I don't know where they got that from. There also isn't anything stopping someone from forking Durdraw if they want to.

New comment by icecheese in "Durdraw – ANSI art editor for Unix-like systems"

icecheese — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 04:11:35 +0000

I don't want to say too much out of respect for privacy, but the charge last year was for a probation issue, not related to the old charge. He was acquitted on the probation issue, and is at home today. Like I said, the sheriff dept decided to lie in their report, about pretty much everything. If someone told you he has a "life sentence," that was also a lie.

I just saw him the other day at his home. I really hate to see these falsehoods repeated, especially since he isn't here to defend himself. I will tell him about this thread, though.

New comment by icecheese in "Durdraw – ANSI art editor for Unix-like systems"

icecheese — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 01:02:33 +0000

That is not what he was charged with, and he was acquitted. I know him personally and he is a good guy, despite how this looks. Works hard to take care of his family, despite a severe disability, and doesn't have a mean bone in his body.

I think you should remove this link and correct your comments.

New comment by icecheese in "Durdraw – ANSI art editor for Unix-like systems"

icecheese — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:42:45 +0000

That's not true at all. I know him, too. He is offline, not in jail, but plans to be back online at some point. He was acquitted of the charges you referenced. The report you linked is also not accurate about the charges and circumstances. (Believe it or not, cops lie.)

New comment by icecheese in "Libghostty is coming"

icecheese — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 23:26:37 +0000

Sounds like perhaps your main and fallback fonts are missing the Code Points in question.

I am not a ghostty user, but I think it has a setting for that, if you can figure out which font iTerm2 is rendering those glyphs with.

New comment by icecheese in "Monodraw"

icecheese — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 14:29:30 +0000

You might try Durdraw. Not exactly the same as Monodraw, but it does color, utf8, animation, mouse drawing, etc, and runs in the terminal.

New comment by icecheese in "Show HN: MoebiusXBIN – ASCII and text-mode art editor with custom font support"

icecheese — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 06:01:34 +0000

SAUCE has proven quite resilient and adaptable. I don't think it really works for describing newer developments like like Utf-8, 256 color or RGB ANSI art. It maybe misses some vintage platforms like ATASCII. But that could change with a format update. For MS-DOS and Amiga ANSI art packs, and some nicher formats like Xbin, it's pretty standard.

XBIN files have been scattered around artscene packs since the 90s, but since it is directly tied to VGA hardware, it remains niche. Some people really like it. I have always found it tricky to work with.

I like to think the DUR (durdraw) format can be adopted or extended to describe most text art, though custom font support like Xbin is not in the current version. I also like to think that DUR's JSON core makes it easier for mortals and programmers to play with than SAUCE's dense binary format (and ANSI escape codes, even), but that's a bit subjective.

New comment by icecheese in "16colo.rs: ANSI/ASCII art archive"

icecheese — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 17:11:24 +0000

Durdraw is a modern and powerful ANSI editor for Linux/Unix/MacOS/WSL. Unlike other ANSI editors, it supports Unicode/Utf-8 encoding and 256 colors. Frame-based animation with custom speed control, too.

https://durdraw.org

Other modern editors are Moebius and IcyDraw (part of Icytools).

New comment by icecheese in "16colo.rs: ANSI/ASCII art archive"

icecheese — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 17:10:15 +0000

Durdraw actually can open the files directly from 16colo.rs (File Open screen, tab to or click on "16colo.rs archive"). You don't need to download them first.

It also includes a program called "durview" for just viewing instead of editing the files. It works quite nicely for browsing the live 16colo.rs archive.

Since Durdraw and Durview automatically convert from CP437 to Utf-8, you don't need a custom font. It's very nice.

For leaving on the screen, you can load the ANSI file in Durdraw, then save it as a Utf-8 ANSI. That converts the character encoding to be Linux compatible. Then you can just "cat" the file from the console.