[geeks] Am I getting too old or something.....

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 03:58:40PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On July 16, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > > > >  A very warped (but probably still tasty) one for those who read their
> > > > >email in a proportional font?
> > > > 
> > > > What kind of deranged pervert reads their mail in a proportional font!?!?
> > > 
> > >   A lot of people who run Windows, apparently.
> > 
> > I would be interested in developing an email program that let you read
> > your messages in a proportional font, but would smartly make ascii
> > drawings appear correctly anyway.  Plus things like underlines.
> >                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^
> > 
> > I don't think it would be that hard to do...
> 
>   The underline thing would be easy...VM under emacs can parse
> emoticons and replace them with images in the buffer, little smileys
> and stuff like that.  Recognizing ascii art would be a whole different
> ballgame though, I think.

We would just need to look for more than 1 line with an unusual amount
of punctuation.  Use a non-proportional font to draw that much of the
art, then make sure it lines up properly with the line above it like
it would if the whole thing was non-proportional.  This is needed for
things like this:  /\
                  /__\ where the ascii art and text are overlapping.
Stuff that stands completely alone like:

---
| |
___

is even easier to deal with.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd