I just came across this web site describing The World, Justified, a piece of (ASCII) art created by a couple of Brazilians. Very interesting idea. I was able to replicate it using Mathematica 6 in just a few lines of code.
In[1]:=
map = CountryData[“World”, {“Shape”, “Equirectangular”}]
Out[1]=
In[2]:=
g = Rasterize[map, ImageSize→80]
Out[2]=
In[3]:=
raster = First @ Cases[g, _Raster, ∞] ;
In[4]:=
txt = Reverse @ First[raster]/.{ {255, 255, 255} →” “, {_, _, _} →”*”} ;
In[5]:=
CellPrint @ Cell[StringJoin @@ Riffle[StringJoin/@txt, “\n”], FontFamily→”Courier”]
In[6]:=
CellPrint @ Cell[StringJoin @@ Riffle[StringReplace[#, ” “→””] &/@txt, “\n”], TextAlignment→Left, FontFamily→”Courier”]
In[7]:=
CellPrint @ Cell[StringJoin @@ Riffle[StringReplace[#, ” “→””] &/@txt, “\n”], TextAlignment→Right, FontFamily→”Courier”]
In[8]:=
CellPrint @ Cell[StringJoin @@ Riffle[StringReplace[#, ” “→””] &/@txt, “\n”], TextAlignment→Center, FontFamily→”Courier”]
