AEWAN Ascii Art Editor
Copyright (c) 2004 Bruno Takahashi C. de Oliveira
Licensed under the GNU General Public license
Refer to the COPYING file for a full text of the license.

[[ 0. PROJECT HOME PAGE ]]

        http://aewan.sourceforge.net

There you will find author information, FAQ, links to the latest
version of the program, etc.

[[ 1. HOW TO COMPILE AND INSTALL ]]

Assuming you downloaded aewan-0.X.Y.tar.gz (where X, Y represent nonnegative
integers), this is how you would compile it:

$ tar -zxf aewan-0.X.Y.tar.gz
$ cd aewan-0.X.Y
$ ./configure
$ make
$ su -c 'make install'

NOTE: as of version 0.8.7, aewan no longer requires the separate libbores 
library, since it has been merged into the project.

[[ 2. THANKS ]]

Thanks to every who, directly or indirectly, contributed to this project.
In particular, I would like to thank:

  * Sourceforge.net for their excellent Open Source hosting infrastructure
  * The authors of tetradraw, whose program served as an inspiration
    to write this editor

I would also like to thank Robert Lemmen <robertle@semistable.com> for all
his cooperation in getting aewan into the Debian distribution.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE WORKED OR ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON THIS PROJECT:

  * Bruno T. C. de Oliveira (brunotc@gmail.com)
  * Peep Pullerits (http://solicit.estprog.ee; solicit@estprog.ee)
  * Praveen Kurup <praveen_kurup@jasubhai.com>
  * Gerfried Fuchs <alfie@ist.org>

[[ 3. WHAT IS AEWAN ]]

Summary: Aewan is a multi-layered ascii-art/animation editor that produces
both stand-alone cat-able art files and an easy-to-parse format for integration
in your terminal applications. It is primarily designed for Linux, although it
currently also compiles under FreeBSD and possibly other *NIX systems.

More details: 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.
Aewan also supports 'intelligent' horizontal and vertical flipping (e.g.
converts '\' to '/', etc).

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. A layer dialog is provided through which the user can
change the order of the layers. Thus, each layer can be edited independently in
order to generate a composite drawing. 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 with Aewan (note: to be fully
implemented next release).

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. Currently it has
been tested on the Linux terminal, rxvt, xterm, the Cygwin terminal and the
FreeBSD console. Although it is already quite stable (I am already using it on
some projects of mine), it is a little rough on the edges, but that can be
worked out in the near future.