Summary: Aewan is a multi-layered ascii-art/animation editor that produces
both stand-alone cat-able art files and an easy-to-parse format for integration
in your terminal applications. It is primarily designed for Linux, although it
currently also compiles under FreeBSD and possibly other *NIX systems.
More details: Aewan is a curses-based program that allows for the creation and
editing of ascii art. The user is able to move the cursor around the screen by
means of the arrow keys and 'paint' characters by pressing the corresponding
keys. There are dialog boxes that allow the user to choose foreground and
background colors, as well as bold and blink attributes. The user may also
select rectangular areas of the canvas in order to move, copy and paste them.
Aewan also supports 'intelligent' horizontal and vertical flipping (e.g.
converts '\' to '/', etc).
What sets Aewan apart from similar projects is the fact that it can work with
multiple layers, and has the ability to turn transparency and visibility on and
off for each layer. A layer dialog is provided through which the user can
change the order of the layers. Thus, each layer can be edited independently in
order to generate a composite drawing. Instead of using the layers for
compositing, it is also possible to use the layers as frames for an animation,
thus enabling the user to create ascii animations with Aewan.
Aewan can export animations to a "less movie", that is, a regular file that
will show the animation when when paged through in the 'less' pager or similar
program (even Notepad will work if you don't need color). It can also export a
shellscript which will play the animation on the terminal when executed.
The file format is easy to parse, so it is easy to write a terminal-based
application that uses the Aewan files to display onscreen. Currently it has
been tested on the Linux terminal, rxvt, xterm, the Cygwin terminal and the
FreeBSD console.
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