But the chafa gallery isn't showing off ascii text rendering. Are there examples that use ascii text?

Good point. I haven't found many ascii examples online.

Here's a copy-paste snippet where you can try chafa-ascii-fying images in your own terminal, if you have uvx:

  uvx --with chafa-py python -c '
  from chafa import * 
  from chafa.loader import Loader 
  import sys 
  img = Loader(sys.argv[1])
  config = CanvasConfig() 
  config.calc_canvas_geometry(img.width,img.height,0.5,True,False)
  symbol_map = SymbolMap()
  symbol_map.add_by_tags(SymbolTags.CHAFA_SYMBOL_TAG_ASCII)
  config.set_symbol_map(symbol_map)
  config.canvas_mode = CanvasMode.CHAFA_CANVAS_MODE_FGBG
  canvas = Canvas(config)
  canvas.draw_all_pixels(img.pixel_type,img.get_pixels(),img.width,img.height,img.rowstride)
  print(canvas.print().decode())
  ' \
  myimage.jpg