3A (Animated ASCII Art) is a straightforward, human-readable text format for storing ASCII animations. It is disigned to be easy editable in any text editor without spechial software needed. Espechially it textual representation preserves art layout unlike plaintext with ANSI escape codes which is historically used to store ASCII art.

• 3a_legacy_spec - is an old specification (currently implemented in most tools)
• 3a - is a new spec

Back in 2020 I was ricing my linux system and planned to use ASCII animations in rice. For some reason, I assumed that there was a common file format for such animations and tools for working with it, but it turned out that this was not the case. Therefore, I developed 3a.

logo.3a is an official 3a format example.
You can also find more 3a art here.

• tools
  • aaa - Tui tool for 3a files rendering
  • convert3a - Tool for convert 3a animations to media formats
• libs
  • rs3a
  • py3a
  • go3a

• durdraw is a TUI ascii art editor with it's own format (gzipped json) with animations support.
• nuru is a binary ascii art format. Seems abandoned.

• MIME info files
• Compact binary format
• implementations
  • rust
  • go
  • python
  • JS
  • lua
  • zig
  • odin
• conversions to other formats
  • SVG
  • asciicast
  • durformat
  • images
  • gif
  • video
• text editors support
  • vim, nvim
  • VsCode
  • emacs?
• LSP?
• support in durdraw
• 3a specific ascii art editor
• file managers / viewers support
  • yazi
  • ranger
  • n3?
  • allmytoes?

Files in this repository are distributed under the CC0 license.

To the extent possible under law, asciimoth has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to 3a.