aewan

Multi-Layered ASCII Art and Animation Editor

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. 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. 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. 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. Aewan has been tested on the Linux terminal, rxvt, xterm, and the FreeBSD console.