ASCII art

<graphics> The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set (mainly "|-/\+"). Also known as "character graphics" or "ASCII graphics"; see also boxology. Here is a serious example:

   o----)||(--+--|<----+   +---------o + D O
      L  )||(  |        |   |             C U
    A I  )||(  +-->|-+  |   +-\/\/-+--o -   T
    C N  )||(        |  |   |      |        P
      E  )||(  +-->|-+--)---+--)|--+-o      U
         )||(  |        |          | GND    T
    o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+
 
    A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier
    circuit feeding a capacitor input filter circuit
 
                          Figure 1.
And here are some very silly examples:

   |\/\/\/|     ____/|              ___    |\_/|    ___
    |      |     \ o.O|   ACK!      /   \_  |` '|  _/   \
    |      |      =(_)=  THPHTH!   /      \/     \/      \
    | (o)(o)        U             /                       \
    C      _)  (__)                \/\/\/\  _____  /\/\/\/
    | ,___|    (oo)                       \/     \/
    |   /       \/-------\         U                  (__)
   /____\        ||     | \    /---V  `v'-            oo )
  /      \       ||---W||  *  * |--|   || |`.         |_/\
 
 		//-o-\\
 	 ____---=======---____
      ====___\   /.. ..\   /___====      Klingons rule OK!
    //        ---\__O__/---        \\
    \_\                           /_/
 
 				    _____
 			    __...---'-----`---...__
 		       _===============================
   ,----------------._/'      `---..._______...---'
   (_______________||_) . .  ,--'
       /    /.---'         `/
      '--------_- - - - - _/
 	       `--------'
 
 			   Figure 2.
There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard character names in the fashion of a rebus.

 +--------------------------------------------------------+
  |      ^^^^^^^^^^^^                                      |
  | ^^^^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^                       |
  |                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
  |        ^^^^^^^         B       ^^^^^^^^^               |
  |  ^^^^^^^^^          ^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^      |
  +--------------------------------------------------------+
 	     "A Bee in the Carrot Patch"
 
                        Figure 3.
Within humorous ASCII art, there is, for some reason, an entire flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. One is shown in Figure 2; here are three more:

	  (__)              (__)              (__)
 	  (\/)              ($$)              (**)
    /-------\/        /-------\/        /-------\/
   / | 666 ||        / |=====||        / |     ||
  *  ||----||       *  ||----||       *  ||----||
     ~~    ~~          ~~    ~~          ~~    ~~
   Satanic cow    This cow is a Yuppie   Cow in love
 
 			  Figure 4.
MORE

(06 Feb 1996)