ANSI Art in the Fingerverse

I posted ANSI Art at 'ansi@happynetbox.com' to test displaying 'graphics' via the finger protocol. While the fingerverse is primarily a 7-bit ASCII medium, being able to post and display ANSI Art on a .plan file proved to be nostalgically exciting.

A great part of my desire to post ANSI Art on a .plan file was finding a reason to spend some time looking over great 8-bit pixel color art - especially when drawn for the 80x25 canvas. I haven't done so in ages and this account gives me a reason to re-engage with ANSI Art again.

ANSI Art: Should I?

I don't necessary think it's a great idea posting ASCII-unfriendly content on the Fingerverse (it can be annoying, I agree) but... it doesn't strike me like an awful idea either. It's not content that would threaten to take over the fingerverse and it might prove entertaining (for some) to see an occasional ANSI post.

I was always going to label the account as ANSI-something so it can be easily skipped. Thankfully ansi@happynetbox.com was still available.

List of Working Clients

Built-in tools (available everywhere):
(no install, no prep. Just copy/paste to the command-line)

• printf "ansi\r\n" | nc happynetbox.com 79 | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }
• curl -s gopher://happynetbox.com:79/0ansi | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }
• { cat <(printf "ansi\n"); sleep 3; } | telnet happynetbox.com 79 | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }

finger clients (all are portable, open source downloads - see fingerverse):

• textnet ansi@happynetbox.com | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }
• bfinger ansi@happynetbox.com | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }
• dfinger ansi@happynetbox.com | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }
• finger-client ansi@happynetbox.com | { content=$(cat); echo -e "$content"; }

Non-Working Clients

• Classic `finger` command (no 8-bit support)
• Lynx, Bombadillo, Gopherus, etc (controls finger output directly)
• Any client that doesn't output cleanly to stdout

Note: I used A.R.T. to prep the ANSI files for upload. This was always art's core mission.

Addendum: Windows

In re-reading this doc, it seemed so natural to say "available everywhere" and imply a universal solution for viewing 'ANSI over Finger'. This is 100% a Linux solution and should work w/o issue on macOS and *BSD. Microsoft is so far removed from my computing life (except for github) that I sometimes forget about them entirely.

I'll leave the doc as is. Added a note on top about compatibility. Windows itself has a ton of native tooling - I'll dig a bit to see how 'ANSI over Finger' can be supported as easily as above.