I'll say what I said in another comment: Isn't it fine to just use Emacs for this purpose? You don't have to use it as a general-purpose text editor if all you

I'll say what I said in another comment: Isn't it fine to just use Emacs for this purpose? You don't have to use it as a general-purpose text editor if all you want to do with it is make ASCII art. Just as with any new thing, you'd have to learn a bit, but not that much...