.         .       █████▌  ██▌       █████▌ · ██▌ ██▌  █████▌  ██████▌  ████████
                  ██▌ ██▌ ██▌  ·   ██▌  ██▌  ███▌██▌  ██▌    .  ██▌   · ███████
    ▄▄▄▄▄   ▄██▄  █████▌  ██▌      ████▌██▌  ██████▌ .████▌     ██▌      ▀█████
  ▄██▓████▄  ▀▀   ██▌     ██▌      ██▌  ██▌ .██▌███▌  ██▌     · ██▌        ▀▀██
 ▐████▓█▒██▌      ██▌     ██████▌  ██▌  ██▌  ██▌ ██▌  █████▌    ██▌  ·      .
  ▀█▓██▒██▀     .                                            │
    ▀▀▀▀▀         ██████▌  █████▌  █████▌      ·    .        │
·                    ██▌   ██▌   · ██▌ ██▌               ────┼────       .
       ▄█▀██▄    ·  ██▌  . ████▌   ██▌ ██▌   .    .          │
  ·   ▐█   ▄▄▌     ██▌     ██▌     ██▌ ██▌                   │             ·
       ▀▄███▀ .   ██████▌  █████▌  █████▌ ▄▄▄▄▄▄█▀▀██▀▀████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄        .
                           ▄▄▄▄▄█████▀▀▀▀▀  ▄▄▄▄▄██▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▄▄▄███████████▄▄▄▄▄
    .           .   ▄▄▄████▀▀▀▀▄▄     ▄▄█▄██▀▀▀▀▀     ▄▀▀▄       ▄   ▀▀▀▀▀█████

ANSI Art in the Fingerverse

On 25 Oct 2025, I posted ANSI Art to ansi@happynetbox.com to see how well I could render 'graphics' via the finger protocol. While the fingerverse is primarily a 7-bit ASCII medium, being able to post and display ANSI Art in a .plan file proved to be nostalgically exciting.

I haven't looked over ANSI Art in ages and this account gives me a reason to engage with great looking 8-bit color art again - especially when drawn for the 80x25 canvas.

ANSI Art: Should I?

I don't necessarily think it's a great idea to post ASCII-unfriendly content in the Fingerverse (it's misplaced, I agree) but... it doesn't strike me as 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. Also, 7-bit ASCII and 8-bit ANSI Art have always been close cousins working toward similar terminal-friendly solutions.

The account is labeled ansi@happynetbox.com so it's easy to identify and skip over.

List of Working Clients

Built-in tools:

• printf "ansi\r\n" | nc happynetbox.com 79 | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• curl -s gopher://happynetbox.com:79/0ansi | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• (printf "ansi\n"; sleep 3) | telnet happynetbox.com 79 | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"

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

• textnet ansi@happynetbox.com | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• bfinger ansi@happynetbox.com | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• dfinger ansi@happynetbox.com | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• finger-client ansi@happynetbox.com | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• sfc happynetbox.com ansi | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"


• nfinger ansi@happynetbox.com | head -n -2 | echo -e "$(cat)"

Additional Clients

finger clients (displays ANSI Art with post-processing additions):

• lynx -dump -width=9999 gopher://happynetbox.com:79/0ansi | echo -e "$(cat)"


• lynx -source gopher://happynetbox.com:79/0ansi | echo -e "$(cat)"

Non-Working Clients

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

How-To (26 Nov 2025)

Coming soon... a bash file that does the core work of conversion. It was done a while back but I need to rewrite sections and have it add escape codes during the conversion process.

The bash file has been sitting, unused, for a while because I had already converted a bunch of ANSI Art. But... the ANSI Art is finishing and so I'll need to put the script back into action again soon-ish. I'll work on it then.

Addendum: Windows

I should clarify that the 'ANSI over Finger' implementation presented here is not Windows compatible. I work in Linux and use the tools available on the system. Unfortunately, Windows users will need alternative approaches due to native tooling differences.