Posts tagged Ascension

Ascension - along an unknown road

Photo by Jean-Pol Grandmont

Some people asked if I have a roadmap for Ascension. Will it be more like a viewer or an editor? What features are you going to implement? To be honest, I’m not sure. Primarily I aim to create the best ASCII art viewer around. On the other hand Ascension is already capable of editing and resaving all supported ASCII documents using the proper encoding. I have no plan to drop that support, why should I? So let’s say it is not just a viewer. Anyway, at first instance I want to develop viewer components and later releases will very likely add additional editor capabilities. I can imagine an image to ASCII conversion or an implementation for drawing block ASCII (CP437) and modern ASCII (Unicode). First release will be in a few weeks. Of course Ascension will come with a beautiful UI, stunning interface icons and great usability. But these features are expected on Mac OS X, a platform where Ascension even is unrivaled. Ascension is related to ASCII art and I’m curious to find out where this unknown road leads us. 

Photo by Jean-Pol Grandmont

AutoHyperlinks.framework

Here’s a link to my repository of AutoHyperlinks, a Cocoa Framework that handles URL detection. This is my personal fork, aimed to be an Intel 32/64-bit lightweight variant with an improved codebase and Garbage Collection. I initially forked AutoHyperlinks from the Adium project to bundle a contemporary optimized version of this great framework with my app Ascension. There is a Clang / LLVM compiled binary available in the downloads section of the repository. Not a big deal, but somehow cool enough to share. It’s possible to use it in Mac App Store projects, no conflict with Apple’s guidelines.

In addition to the toolbar images I posted here on my blog some time ago, Anna Shlyapnikova created an awesome set of icons for Ascension, intended to replace the standard preferences set you most likely know from many Mac OS X applications. While Ascension is making great progress (there should be a release within the next few weeks), Anna shares the icons she created for my upcoming app with the whole world. You can download her “Mini Icon Set” from the link below. It’s free even for commercial use as long as you credit and implement a link back to her deviantART page. Get the “Mini Icon Set” by Anna Shlyapnikova

In addition to the toolbar images I posted here on my blog some time ago, Anna Shlyapnikova created an awesome set of icons for Ascension, intended to replace the standard preferences set you most likely know from many Mac OS X applications. While Ascension is making great progress (there should be a release within the next few weeks), Anna shares the icons she created for my upcoming app with the whole world. You can download her “Mini Icon Set” from the link below. It’s free even for commercial use as long as you credit and implement a link back to her deviantART page.

Get the “Mini Icon Set” by Anna Shlyapnikova

Today I want to introduce you to some UI excerpts. These gorgeous icons have been designed by Anna Shlyapnikova. She’s a very talented graphic artist from Russia and I’m so glad her work will be part of Ascension, this is a great addition. Ascii art consists of fragments pieced together, making a whole. It’s the same with Rubik’s Cube, so the app icon is of symbolic nature. The interface icons might change, Anna is planning some supplements and asked if there is something I possibly need. If you are interested in supporting Anna, please visit her at deviantART or follow her at Twitter.

Today I want to introduce you to some UI excerpts. These gorgeous icons have been designed by Anna Shlyapnikova. She’s a very talented graphic artist from Russia and I’m so glad her work will be part of Ascension, this is a great addition. Ascii art consists of fragments pieced together, making a whole. It’s the same with Rubik’s Cube, so the app icon is of symbolic nature. The interface icons might change, Anna is planning some supplements and asked if there is something I possibly need. If you are interested in supporting Anna, please visit her at deviantART or follow her at Twitter.

The development of Ascension is making great progress. While searching for an easy way to achieve advanced hyperlink detection, I discovered the AutoHyperlinks framework. It is part of the Adium project, but (unlike Adium) BSD-licensed. This allows usage even for commercial applications. I created a slightly modified lightweight variant of the framework, which I added to Ascension’s build phase. Cocoa coders should really take a look, the detection capabilities are awesome and implementation is quite easy. Click on the picture to see a non-scaled variant of the screenshot showing the final URL / URI detection scheme of Ascension.

The development of Ascension is making great progress. While searching for an easy way to achieve advanced hyperlink detection, I discovered the AutoHyperlinks framework. It is part of the Adium project, but (unlike Adium) BSD-licensed. This allows usage even for commercial applications. I created a slightly modified lightweight variant of the framework, which I added to Ascension’s build phase. Cocoa coders should really take a look, the detection capabilities are awesome and implementation is quite easy. Click on the picture to see a non-scaled variant of the screenshot showing the final URL / URI detection scheme of Ascension.

Ascension - ASCII art for Mac OS X

Talking about ASCII art always means talking about computer history. This unique graphic design technique is text based art, consisting of pictures pieced together from the characters defined by the ASCII Standard in 1963. A special form called block ASCII (or high ASCII) uses extended chars of the 8-bit Code page 437, invented by IBM in 1979 for IBM PC and MS-DOS. Block ASCII is often referred as ANSI art. From the widespread usage traced to the bulletin board systems of the late 70’s and early 80’s grew a remarkable scene of devoted underground / online art groups. Over the years, warez groups began to incorporate ASCII art by spreading .nfo files with their releases. At the end of the 90’s the Newskool style emerged and came up with extended characters. Classic 7-bit ASCII chars remain predominant while the style developed further after the introduction and adaption of Unicode. On a modern OS, files containing ASCII art will never look as they were intended by the artist. With a special ASCII/ANSI art viewer even the block ASCII can be displayed properly. Unfortunately, for Mac OS X there is absolutely nothing available worth mentioning… until now. Let me introduce you to Ascension, ASCII art for the rest of us. 


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