58

What could I do to make it print like it looks in the HTML document in the web browser?

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head>
        <title>Example</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        ###### #    #   ##   #    # #####  #      ######
        #       #  #   #  #  ##  ## #    # #      #      
        #####    ##   #    # # ## # #    # #      ##### 
        #        ##   ###### #    # #####  #      #      
        #       #  #  #    # #    # #      #      #      
        ###### #    # #    # #    # #      ###### ######
    </body>
</html>

Gives:

# # ## # # ##### # ###### # # # # # ## ## # # # # ##### ## # # # ## # # # # > ##### # ## ###### # # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # ###### # # # # # # # ###### ######
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1

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
110
+50

Use the <pre> tag! Put it before and after your EXAMPLE.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head>
        <title>Example</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <pre>
###### #    #   ##   #    # #####  #      ######
#       #  #   #  #  ##  ## #    # #      #      
#####    ##   #    # # ## # #    # #      ##### 
#        ##   ###### #    # #####  #      #      
#       #  #  #    # #    # #      #      #      
###### #    # #    # #    # #      ###### ######
        </pre>
    </body>
</html>
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3 Comments

Although technically you'd probably want <pre># ... #</pre> (without a newline) or to use comments (<!-- -->) to eliminate white space you likely do not want.
This doesn't seem to be working for art that includes escaping characters (i.e. newline '\'). See the kittens found here: user.xmission.com/~emailbox/ascii_cats.htm - any way to compensate?
You will need to escape newlines with '\'. For example do '\\' for a single slash ('\') in art.
17

HTML is designed to collapse white space by default. In order words, all series of white spaces characters (spaces, tabs, line feeds...) are replaced by a single space on rendering. You can control this behaviour with the white-space CSS property:

The white-space CSS property is used to to describe how whitespace inside the element is handled.

Values

  • normal Sequences of whitespace are collapsed. Newline characters in the source are handled as other whitespace. Breaks lines as necessary to fill line boxes.
  • pre Sequences of whitespace are preserved, lines are only broken at newline characters in the source.
  • nowrap Collapses whitespace as for normal, but suppresses line breaks (text wrapping) within text.
  • pre-wrap Sequences of whitespace are preserved. Lines are only broken at newline characters in the source and as necessary to fill line boxes.
  • pre-line Sequences of whitespace are collapsed. Lines are broken at newlines in the source and as necessary to fill line boxes.

In the case ASCII art you also want to enforce a fixed-width font-family.

.ascii-art {
    font-family: monospace;
    white-space: pre;
}
<div class="ascii-art">
###### #    #   ##   #    # #####  #      ######
#       #  #   #  #  ##  ## #    # #      #      
#####    ##   #    # # ## # #    # #      ##### 
#        ##   ###### #    # #####  #      #      
#       #  #  #    # #    # #      #      #      
###### #    # #    # #    # #      ###### ######
</div>

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2 Comments

Although I'm happy for all the rep my answer has created, Alvaro's answer is possibly even more correct, as these days the way to do it is to define a class like they have.
@JohnFiala Still, it can be argued that <pre> is more semantic than <div>. Let's say that both answers provide the full picture ;-)

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