Even if one took it to mean using ECMA 35 and ECMA 48 escape and control sequences, which wholly forgets the likes of Avatar and PCBoard, "ANSI Art" usually did not actually use any ECMA 35 character set switching, instead relying upon SAUCE data and suchlike and using IBM's (not ANSI's nor ECMA's) rather different code page system and 8-bit character sets, and usually furthermore misinterpreted ECMA 48 SGR sequences when it came to blinking, bright, faint, and bold.
If people are preferring "XTerm Art" or "Terminal Art" for what is made nowadays, that seems to be a nomenclature change for the better.
Yes, they do. All the color escape sequences (CSI) used in these were standardized by ANSI. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
More importantly, where the name is originating from, is the DOS driver. By default DOS did not interpret color codes, one would have to load ANSI.SYS for that, and that's where the term "ANSI art" comes from. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI.SYS
Then you need to learn a lot more about control sequences.
You can start with CSI, value 0x009B, not being an ASCII character. Then proceed to ITU T.416 (ISO 8613-6) where the SGR control sequences for indexed and direct RGB colours are standardized. Then you can learn that the "E" in ECMA-48 does not stand for "ANSI", but for "European". And finally you can discover that ECMA-48 standardizes exactly 8 colours. 16 colour SGR sequences beloved of CGA-like and VGA-like art are not in the standards and are in fact the product of IBM's AIXterm.
LOL, why is the page called "ANSI escape sequences" then? Why were the driver called ANSI.SYS then? I think it is you who should re-read that escape sequences were standardized by ANSI a few more times until it clicks.
> You can start with CSI, value 0x009B, not being an ASCII character.
CSI is NOT 0x009B (in fact C1 shorthand is not supported anywhere, not in the old 7-bit video terminals, and not in the modern UTF-8 aware terminal emulators either).
From the wiki page, I quote: "For Control Sequence Introducer, or CSI, commands, the ESC [ (written as \e[, \x1b[ or \033[ in several programming languages) is followed by any number (including none) of "parameter bytes" in the range 0x30–0x3F"
That's all 7-bit ASCII characters in the full sequence (introducer, parameters, separators, terminators as well), dude. It is definitely you who should re-read a few more times until it clicks.
> 16 colour SGR sequences beloved of CGA-like and VGA-like art are not in the standards
LOL, one: CGA had 4 colors and not 16, and second: the 16 colors in SGR are defined by the standard alright. See for yourself, ECMA-48 section 8.3.117 page 62: https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-4... (8 base colors named explicitly and their high intensity variants in mode 1, thus making up 16 colors in total).
Please don't spread false information.
CGA in text mode and low resolution graphics mode had 16 colors. So did CGA composite color graphics. Normal CGA graphics mode is 4 color. Hence why ANSI.SYS supported 16 colors in 1983, a year before EGA was introduced.
Since text mode essentially works like ROM tiles (character glyphs) on an 80x25 grid, the 16kb of CGA is enough to store color information (RGB and Intensity bits) for reach cell.
Some of them, like Durdraw, have fully embraced the extended Unicode character set (Utf-8 encoding instead of IBM's Code Page 437) and extended colors (xterm 256 colors instead of the traditional 16 colors), keeping ANSI art relevant and viable into the foreseeable future.
People are making logos and assets for their modern TUI apps and games, for example. Neovim themes. Ly display manager wallpapers.
I am personally glad to see that the medium is coming back into relevance. It was such a fun part of digital culture and creativity in the 90s. I hope the next generation gets to experience some of that thanks to modern tooling, instead of just observed as a relic of the past.
Edit: There is also a debate as to whether Unicode/Utf-8 characters with ANSI and Xterm escape codes constitutes "ANSI art." Some are calling it "UNSI art," or just modern terminal art.
Also, shout-out to the CP437 ANSI artists who continue to evolve the artistic styles of the medium, push the envelope, and release new ANSI packs. Hard, valuable work.