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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