Editing ASCII art (section)

===="Block ASCII" / "High ASCII" style ASCII art on the IBM PC====
{{Contradicts other|date=June 2012|1=ANSI art}}
[[File:ASCII notepad acidview compare.png|right|200px|thumbnail|Block ASCII display via Notepad versus ACiDView for Windows]]
So-called "block ASCII" or "high ASCII" uses the extended characters of the 8-bit [[code page 437]], which is a proprietary standard introduced by [[IBM]] in 1979 (ANSI Standard x3.16) for the IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS operating systems. "Block ASCIIs" were widely used on the PC during the 1990s until the Internet replaced BBSes as the main communication platform. Until then, "block ASCIIs" dominated the [[Computer art scene|PC Text Art Scene]].<ref name="asciistyles">{{cite web| url= http://www.RoySAC.com/roy-sac_styles_of_underground_text_art.html| title= The Three ASCII Art Styles of the Underground Text Art Scene| last= Roy/SAC| website= www.roysac.com| access-date = 19 October 2017}}</ref><ref name="ddarthistory">[http://cd.textfiles.com/darkdomain/www/html/history-art_scene.html An Abbreviated History of the Underground Computer Art Scene] by Napalm, 11 October 1998, The History of Art and Technology</ref>

The first art scene group that focused on the extended character set of the PC in their artwork was called "Aces of ANSI Art", or {{proper name|[[A.A.A|<A.A.A>]]}}. Some members left in 1990 and formed a group called "ANSI Creators in Demand", or [[ACiD]]. In that same year the second major underground art scene group "Insane Creators Enterprise", or [[iCE Advertisements|ICE]], was founded.<ref name="100years">[http://www.cow.net/conned/notacon/artscene/notacon-100artscene-transcript.txt 100 YEARS OF THE COMPUTER ART SCENE], Presented by [[Jason Scott Sadofsky]] and [[RaD Man]] ([[ACiD Productions|ACiD]]), [[Notacon]] Conference – Cleveland, Ohio, USA, 23–25 April 2004.</ref>

There is some debate between ASCII and block ASCII artists, with "Hardcore" ASCII artists maintaining that block ASCII art is in fact not ASCII art, because it does not use the 128 characters of the original ASCII standard. On the other hand, block ASCII artists argue that if their art uses only characters of the computer's character set, then it is to be called ASCII, regardless if the character set is proprietary or not.

Microsoft Windows does not support the [[American National Standards Institute|ANSI Standard]] x3.16. One can view block ASCIIs with a text editor using the font "[[Terminal (font)|Terminal]]", but it will not look exactly as it was intended by the artist. With a special ASCII/ANSI viewer, such as ACiDView for Windows {{crossreference|(see: {{slink|List of text editors|ASCII and ANSI art|nopage=y}})}}, one can see block ASCII and ANSI files properly. An example that [[#"Block ASCII" / "High ASCII" style ASCII art on the IBM PC|illustrates the difference]] in appearance is part of this article. Alternatively, one could look at the file using the [[TYPE (DOS command)|TYPE]] command in the command prompt.