Avatar Translator

Translates AVATAR (Advanced Video Attribute Assembler and Recreator) color and cursor codes.

Details

The AVATAR standard was first documented as FSC-0025 by George A. Stanislav.

AVATAR has several advantages over ANSI-BBS:

All codes have a consistent size due to its binary format. A consistent size can sometimes make it easier to parse the codes. For example, the code to change the current color is always three bytes in length; the code to move the cursor is always four bytes in length. For comparison, ANSI-BBS specifies parameters as decimal text and therefore its escape sequences can vary in length.
For IBM-compatible computers, AVATAR color attributes are the same as IBM/CGA text color attributes. Developers under MS-DOS and Windows consoles do not need to map the color values.

However, ANSI-BBS has several advantages:

ANSI-BBS is more widely supported (nearly universally) whereas AVATAR tends to be specialized.
ANSI-BBS is designed for passage over 7-bit channels without additional developer effort.
ANSI-BBS does not use ASCII characters that may conflict with other intended uses.