What does this software do then ?
=================================

 aview is an high quality ascii-art image(pnm) browser and
animation(fli/flc) player usefull especially with lynx browser.

Supports: dos (VGA + MDA), stdio, curses, slang, X11, gpm, linux-console

Features
========
 o High quality ascii art rendering
 o Portable
 o Save into many formats (html, text, ansi, more/less etc...)
 o Contrast, Bright, Gamma control
 o Image zooming/unzooming
 o Three dithering modes
 o Hidden "bonus" features :)
 o Inversion
 o Support for bright, dim, inverse attributes/extended 
        character set

What is PNM file format?
========================

 PNM if an graphics format similiar to GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and
others. Aview uses it because of its simplicity. Many free or shareware
conversion tools from other graphics format exist (ImageMagick, NetPBM 
for UNIX, alchemy for DOS and others.) So you should use aview to 
browse images in many graphics format. UNIX version has script that 
does conversion automatically (using eighter NetPBM (preffered way) 
or ImageMagic conversion program. FIFO is used to do not waste your 
disc space so conversion is fully transparent. Under DOS and other 
operating systems you probably need to do it yourself.

Usage
=====

 UNIX:
  asciiview [filenames] [options]

  to browse any image format supported by NetPBM or ImageMagick. Use OTHERS
  way if you don't have installed these tools

  options should be listed using aview or aaflip program when used w/o
  parameters

 OTHERS:
  aview [options] [filename]

  To browse pbm pgm ppm or pnm image.

  aaflip [options] [filename]

  to browse fli or flc animation

Once aview is started use 'H' for help about keys.

How this all started
====================

   Once upon a time we've (my friend Kamil and I) bought two old
Herculeses as secondary monitors. We didn't know for that time that our
Diamond Stealths 64 cards would become obsolete soon. The next day we
downloaded the logo of Linux Texas Users Group - nice silly penguin
looking like a cowboy! It was so exciting logo ... we decided that we
couldn't live without it and we wanted to see it at boot time as a logo
on our secondary monitors. There was a small problem - Hercules doesn't
support color graphics. So we decided to convert the penguin image to
ascii art using netpbm tools.

   The output was very ugly because the converting algorithm was
absolutly stupid.  During the night I designed a new convertor that
used a font bitmap to creat an aproximation table. The output wasn't
very good since the algorithm wasn't tuned so well. Many months this
small piece of code was waiting on my disc for the day "D". Meanwhile I
started a new project XaoS (a fractal zoomer) with my friend Thomas.
And then I got an idea: Ascii Art Mandelbrots!  I was really impressed
by the result! XaoS was faster, portable and looking much better than
ever before. I found a new way to go ...


AA-Project
==========

                               dT8  8Tb
                              dT 8  8 Tb
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                          <PROJECT><PROJECT>
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                          dT     8  8     Tb
   
Three goals of AA-Project:

  1. Port all important software (like Doom, Second Reality, X windows
     etc..) on AA-lib.

  2. Port AA-lib on all available platforms (mainly ZX-Spectrum and
     Sharp).

  3. Force IBM to start manufacturing MDA cards again.

   AA-project was started by Jan Hubicka. In that times just a few
people knew about it. Then a new demo named BB has been relased to show
the power of AA-lib technology. Now the project is freely available and
anyone can help.

Where to find Aview
===================

   All programs covered under AA-project can be obtained at
`http://aa-project.sourceforge.net'.