ASCII Art Generator

The glyphs. Each letter is five rows and five columns of hashes and spaces. H is two columns with a bar in the middle row. I is a stem with bars at the top and bottom. A is a peak, a bar, and two legs. A space is a narrow gap. Letters are placed left to right with a blank column between them. HI is H, a gap, I. The letters line prints the upper-case text that was drawn, so a lower-case hi is drawn as HI and the line says HI.

Why so few letters. A full alphabet of hash glyphs is a font, and a tiny subset is enough to prove the picture is plain text. If you need a word outside A, H and I, this page will not invent a bad glyph. It will stop. The big text generator widens any basic Latin letter and then depends on the font. This page never depends on the font beyond the hash mark, which every text font has.

Limits. Twelve characters. Five rows. No colour. No download. Copy the five lines if you need them in a monospaced note. In a proportional font the columns will not line up. That is the same character-width issue as justified text, and the cure is the same: paste into a monospaced view.

A classroom can cover the hash picture and ask which letters were requested, then check the letters line. The letters line is the contract. The picture is the drawing. If a column looks shifted, you are not in a monospaced font. Do not add letters to the request and expect them to appear as blanks. The tool refuses the whole string so you notice the unsupported letter instead of publishing a banner that dropped it.

Hash marks are the whole medium. There is no anti-aliasing and no download. Five rows is enough to recognise H, I and A if you are in a monospaced font and not enough to look like a print poster. That modesty is the feature. A request for HELLO fails because E, L and O are not in the glyph table. The failure is better than a banner that silently drops E. Add glyphs only if you are prepared to draw all five rows for that letter and to test them in a monospaced view. Until then the alphabet stays three letters. A space is a narrow gap, not a five-column empty block, so “H I” is not twice as wide as “HI” in the way a full space glyph would be. Look at the rows rather than assuming the gap width.

HI is the sample because both letters exist. A is the sample that is a single glyph, so you can see the peak and the bar without a neighbour. A space between them is allowed and makes a gap. A digit is not allowed. A punctuation mark is not allowed. The refusal is the whole string, so “HI!” does not draw HI and drop the exclamation. Delete the exclamation and press Draw again. The five rows are the entire file format. There is no sixth row of signature.

H then I

Inputs: Text: HI

Leave the text as HI and press Draw. The letters line says HI.

Result: Banner: # # ##### # # # ##### # # # # # # ##### Letters: HI Only A, H, I and spaces are drawn, with hash marks, so the picture does not depend on a special font.

A single A

Inputs: Text: A

Change the text to A and press Draw. The letters line says A.

Result: Banner: ### # # ##### # # # # Letters: A Only A, H, I and spaces are drawn, with hash marks, so the picture does not depend on a special font.

Why only A, H and I?

So the picture is a known hash glyph, not a missing character. Other letters are an error.

Does hi stay lower case?

It is drawn in upper case and the letters line says HI.

Will the columns line up everywhere?

Only in a monospaced font. A proportional font gives the hashes different widths.

Is this fullwidth text?

No. Fullwidth text is the big-text page. This page uses hash marks.

Can I download a PNG?

No. The result is five lines of text.

Is the text uploaded?

No. The rows are built in the browser.