FYI the images from this article are not visible in my web browser:

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/06/06/visualizing-314-the-st-louis-scene-in-charts/

These ones are (for comparison):

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/06/06/visualizing-314-fire-escapes-bbs-directory/

The reason is most certainly due to my browser settings, but also to your choice of transport, whatever that is.

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I find your blog hard to navigate because I would prefer there to be a complete list of articles I can just scan over, rather than the drop down menus. Search is fine, if you know what you're searching for. Perhaps you can add a page with all the articles in order of publication, most recent at the top.

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https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol_(RIP) https://breakintochat.com/wiki/ANSI_art
https://breakintochat.com/wiki/VT52

My grandparents bought us kids an Atari machine, with a cartridge but also a disk drive to play games over the summer. It was used and old then, but we loved it. Or at least I did. I don't know the model.

However, I am very much unfamiliar with Atari as a foundation for BBS experiences, and so have never thought about VT52 at all. VT100, as anybody knows, is the baseline standard for terminal applications. xterm is based on it, I believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT52
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT100

Fascinating that vt52 was the first 80x25 terminal, which was the standard forever until graphics displays really took over.

I need to do a deep dive and see what the relationship is between vt52 and vt100 escape codes. Apparently, the SGR codes we know and love from the terminal were only implemented in vt100 and after. So I wonder what vt52 is up to. Did ECMA crib DEC's notes for their 48 release?

Since you are more familiar with vt52, you must know this already. Can SGR-based ANSI graphics display on an Atari machined based on vt52? I guess not.

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Another related question: are you aware of any utilities that convert between the various character-based standards so that, for example, one could print a 'BIG' encoded image in an SGR environment? This might be an intresting project, but first we'd have to sort out what all the different standards were. Perhaps you are an expert in this. Maybe you know of a conversion program already.

-Hx

Re: Found some of your articles on graphics
By: Hebrix to All on Sun May 31 2026 03:12 am

FYI the images from this article are not visible in my web browser:

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/06/06/visualizing-314-the-st-louis-scen
e-in-charts/

That specific blog post includes interactive charts, which are embedded as iframes. So, if you have Javascript or iframes disabled, then they won't load/render.

I find your blog hard to navigate because I would prefer there to be a complete list of articles I can just scan over, rather than the drop down menus.

Just like any blog, if you want to read/browse through all the articles in reverse chronological order, you can go to the front page and keep clicking "Next Page".

But I can see the value of putting together a simpler page that just lists all the articles as text. I may work on that at some point. Finding the time is the challenge, as always.

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BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

Re: Found some of your articles on graphics
By: Hebrix to All on Sun May 31 2026 03:12 am

However, I am very much unfamiliar with Atari as a foundation for BBS experiences, and so have never thought about VT52 at all. VT100, as anybody knows, is the baseline standard for terminal applications. xterm is based on it, I believe.

Since you are more familiar with vt52, you must know this already. Can SGR-based ANSI graphics display on an Atari machined based on vt52? I guess not.

VT100 is the standard *now*, but in the 1980s there were lots of competing and proprietary standards.

I don't know why Atari chose to use VT52 in its GEMDOS/TOS when it was designing the Atari ST in 1984, but they did! And, of course, they added proprietary extensions to it related to colors and cursor positioning.

VT52 and VT100 are not interchangeable, so no, PC ANSI graphics will not display natively on an Atari ST (say if you opened an .ANS text file from the desktop). The significant differences in color modes and character set between the platforms mean that a converter would be impractical. The ST has no shaded blocks or box-drawing characters, for example.

That being said, the vast majority of Atari ST terminal applications supported VT100 as an optional terminal emulation, but only a few supported the unique PC ANSI character set and colors.

--Josh

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BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

Re: Found some of your articles on graphics
By: Kirkman to Hebrix on Sun May 31 2026 03:36 pm

I find your blog hard to navigate because I would prefer there to be a
complete list of articles I can just scan over, rather than the drop down
menus.

But I can see the value of putting together a simpler page that just lists all the articles as text. I may work on that at some point. Finding the time is the challenge, as always.

Here's a page with a simple list of all the blog articles, in reverse chronological order:

https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Break_Into_Chat_articles

--Josh

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BiC -=- http://breakintochat.com -=- bbs wiki and blog

Re: Found some of your articles on graphics
By: Kirkman to Hebrix on Fri Jun 05 2026 10:39 pm

Hey cool. Thanks for that. I'll work up the list.

-Hx