Show HN: ASCII Drawing Board

8 days ago (delopsu.com)

I've made an ASCII drawing board. You can set any brush, canvas size, export art as a text file.

I want to keep it as manual/analog as possible, hence there is no tool for converting image to ASCII.

Prompting LLMs to draw ASCII art turned out to be a difficult task . So instead I decided to ask it make a drawing board. Wihtout coding agent I wouldn't even try myself. Although it is an interesting task, it would drift me away.

Basically it's just a drawing board with endless variations of textures and brushes: when you make large canvas and zoom out you don't see ASCII anymore, but textured drawing. E.g. this is a cat: https://x.com/delopsu_com/status/1971726204073136219, brush used: " ".

I would appreciate if you could give it a try and tell your people about it, if it's something that may be of their interest. Also please give any feedback here or on X.

turns out there is already (or is emerging) ASCII benchmark for LLMs.

It appears a little buggy handling fixed width improperly, noticeably when using a mouse to write out a word, with uneven drawing, the fixed width spacing does not consistently properly match the cursor movement for some lines.

                     ӨӨӨ       ӨӨ        ӨӨӨ              ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                     ӨӨ       ӨӨӨ        ӨӨӨӨ             ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                     ӨӨ       ӨӨ         ӨӨӨӨ             ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                    ӨӨӨ       ӨӨ         ӨӨӨӨӨ            ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                    ӨӨ        ӨӨ         ӨӨ ӨӨ            ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                   ӨӨӨ       ӨӨӨ         ӨӨ ӨӨ            ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                   ӨӨ        ӨӨ          ӨӨ ӨӨӨ           ӨӨ            ӨӨ
                   ӨӨ        ӨӨ          ӨӨ  ӨӨ          ӨӨӨ            ӨӨ
                   ӨӨ        ӨӨ          ӨӨ  ӨӨӨ         ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                   ӨӨ        ӨӨ          ӨӨ   ӨӨӨ        ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                  ӨӨӨ       ӨӨӨ          ӨӨ    ӨӨ        ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                  ӨӨ        ӨӨ           ӨӨ    ӨӨӨ       ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                  ӨӨ        ӨӨ           ӨӨ     ӨӨ       ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                 ӨӨӨ        ӨӨ           ӨӨ     ӨӨӨ      ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                 ӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨ          ӨӨӨ      ӨӨӨ     ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                 ӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨӨ          ӨӨ        ӨӨ     ӨӨ             ӨӨ
                 ӨӨ         ӨӨ          ӨӨ        ӨӨӨ   ӨӨӨ             ӨӨ
                ӨӨӨ         ӨӨ          ӨӨ         ӨӨ   ӨӨ              ӨӨ
                ӨӨ          ӨӨ          ӨӨ         ӨӨӨ  ӨӨ              ӨӨ
                ӨӨ          ӨӨ          ӨӨ          ӨӨ  ӨӨ              ӨӨ
                ӨӨ          ӨӨ          ӨӨ          ӨӨӨ ӨӨ              ӨӨӨ
               ӨӨӨ          ӨӨ          ӨӨ           ӨӨӨӨӨ               ӨӨ
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               ӨӨ           ӨӨ         ӨӨ             ӨӨӨӨ
               ӨӨ           ӨӨ         ӨӨ              ӨӨӨ
               ӨӨ           ӨӨ         ӨӨ              ӨӨ             ӨӨӨӨӨӨ
               ӨӨ                      ӨӨ                             ӨӨӨӨӨӨ

  •            HNNN          HHHHHHHN
           HNNNNNNNNN  HHHHHHHHHHHHHN
          HNNNNN HNNNNNHHHHHHN     HN
          HN        HNHHN          HN
          HHN         HN         HNNN
           HHN                  HNNN
            HHN              HNNNN
             HHHHN        HNNNNNN
              HHHHHHN   HNNNNN
                 HHHHHHNHNN
                    HHHHN
                       HN

Would much prefer it to start with just printable ASCII characters in the brush (32--126) from which the output would work in more places and would be in better alignment with the name.

Having said that, yes, fun and interesting, thank you...

  • Thank you for trying it and for the feedback! Glad you liked it!

    > start with just printable ASCII characters in the brush

    Yes. I started like this. But then set these fancy characters by default to show the capabilities, because those who are familiar with the concept know the possibilities, but those who don't know could think that it's limited and not notice wide limits.

It's always nice to see new tools editing ASCII; especially when working with markdown documentation.

For those who like those types of tools, but for diagrams, there's asciiflow.com.

Good job!

> So instead I decided to ask it make a drawing board

Very nice. Congrats to the coding agent which made this. Needs an undo button though!

  • Passed it. Here is the reponse:

    > Love to hear that — thank you for sharing!

    Not sure about Undo — part of me wants to keep it hardcore. Like with real ink.

Nice one, thanks for sharing! Love these simple tools that LLMs can help us ship them in no time.

  • Yes, exactly! There might so many unexplored and/or abandoned ideas.

    Thank you for checking it out!

Nice! Feature request: drop-down menu to select a few “popular“ brush sets.

  • Just added brushes palette. So far only local. And reworked layout a bit. Hope it makes board more convenient.

  • Yes, thank you! I'm thinking about making brushes and art gallery, it would be very interesting to see what people come up with.

    Thank you for checking it out and for the feedback!

It's a shame that I haven't read text above after posting (only in Edit mode).

I used asterisk after "difficult task" and in the footer — all between became italic. And also brush was cleaned out.

Doesn't seem to work on Firefox mobile. On each stroke it only renders one "point".

  • Hm. What OS do you use? It works fine (for me) in Firefox on iOS. Haven't tested on Android.

    • For me, Firefox on Android, I get this:

      One stroke draws one spot at the starting point. Any number of further strokes draw nothing. When I tap outside the canvas I can draw one more point

      2 replies →