ASCII export, so I can put nice diagrams in comments and docstrings. Also possibly (assuming those nice diagrams are unambiguous) a parsing bridge which lets me convert them into data.
I’ve been using OmniGraffle for this purpose for ten plus years. They’re gone downhill since moving into the App Store but there certainly are diagramming tools for Mac...
Seems to be specific for the Sachsen region (a state in Germany) to reduce unemployment. I see they offer 20k Euro (to be paid back) for new businesses, also money for starting a secondary education (50%) and re-joining the workforce after long unemployment (funds partly reimburses employers). http://strukturfonds.sachsen.de/esf.html
To incorporate a GmbH company (which is similar to an Inc or Limited) you need 25k Euro in Germany.
So, are you actually getting access to the Alpha when you sign up or are we just getting grabbed to someday down the line get Beta access?
I'd advise you to post this again when you have an actual software to show, that people can test out. I won't sign up for anything and I believe a lot of people don't really want anymore newsletters and sales pitches in their inbox.
Their introductory blog post talks about UML being part of the inspiration for this project. If Diagrams uses UML as its file format, or has first rate UML export, this would be a standout feature that sets it apart from Omni Graffle and the like.
To be fair, it never really was. Mac and Linux were always after thoughts to Windows. Now things are trending towards Mac first, leaving Linux and Windows looking outside in.
Really? This is a native macOS app. It would have to be entirely recreated for other platforms, which is a waste of time and resources for an MVP. If this were a multiplatform Electron app, it would be getting criticism for being an Electron app.
I don't understand why this is bubbling up to the top of hacker news. I presume it is because of high demand and hopes for a native graphing tool, but is there some other reason I am missing? I ask because the project looks to be very early-stage. I see only very simplistic box-and-arrows charts which wouldn't be sufficient for anything but the most basic of ideas -- certainly not for publications or a professional presentation. And the information about its future path and goals is slight-to-none. The team has a very long road ahead to replace full-featured products like LucidChart or OmniGraffle.
[edit: grammar]
Generic support for a solo-developer working on a slick MacOS app. At least that's why I started following the project on Twitter a couple of days ago.
Because options are good? I use Visio on Windows but am constantly needing to do simpler stuff on the Mac at home, and even though PowerPoint works and I have an old OmniGraffle license, I'd love to have something "in between".
I've been looking over a year for something reasonably good and not as messy as Omni. I didn't upvote and it might be manipulated but I did enter my email.
I love how everyone spends years drawing diagrams with mouse torture in visio, OmniGraffle, licid, etc.
eventually everyone will find out about plantuml (puml) which generates diagrams of all kinds via a simple source file and wonder how they could ever live without it.
I agree the diagrams from text is what's needed, since they can be maintained in version control, or even just maintained. Since so many diagrams I look at are produced to share a message and become out of date almost instantly. Developers work in text, so should the visualization tools.
Also https://www.planttext.com/, which is a website with a text field linked to a PlantUML instance somewhere. It's what I use when I'm too lazy to install PlantUML locally.
Mermaid js does that though, and many notetaking apps integrate with it
Personally Draw.io is the best freeapp already out there (online based or desktop), but lucidchart for paid is great too (much better print capabilities)
+ It's all plaintext. I love working with plaintext for all the usual benefits, so this fits.
+ PUML renderer is technically a free-to-download JAR, so it can presumably[0] integrate well with my Org-mode life.
Cons:
- Try to draw anything more complicated than three boxes and an arrow, and you'll be spending 90% of the time fighting the layout engine.
- It's even worse when you have your own opinion about the desired layout. No way to do that reliably, the result is very brittle.
I generally like it, but I'd like it 100x more if there was a way to explicitly pin some component to absolute coordinates. Or at least a better way for giving layout hints than soft constraints introduced through invisible links.
--
EDIT: A random idea if anyone is developing something PUML-like:
How about separating out layouting a bit, and letting me type in something like that:
Basically, I wish I could draw a picture representing the rough layout of key image components, and have this as a hard constraint on positioning other elements.
--
[0] - Presumably, because I gave up on it after couple large-ish diagrams, just before my use has reached the threshold above which I consider Emacs integration.
I don't; in fact, I very much appreciate it. This is a kind of thing I'd pursue if I didn't already have higher-priority work and personal projects, so I'd love if someone else could try this out.
Back in my day, everyone just used graphviz. Heck, OmniGraffle's diagram support was (is?) based on graphviz. Have things gotten much better since then? Graphviz was always hard to beat.
Not so sure about that - I spent a few weeks this spring trying to badger PlantUML into generating the diagrams I wanted to include in a piece of documentation, and I'd much rather have used an ordinary mouse-based graphics tool where I could have simply put things where I wanted them to go.
So here's a question I've been wanting to figure out for ages:
Are there any resources you recommend for learning to make good diagrams? Ie, I love documenting things but I don't have experience in drawing diagrams. I don't know conventions for displaying order of execution, what arrows should indicate (in A->B is A giving information to be? is B requesting information from A? etc).
Are there any good tutorials/classes/whatever on drawing good diagrams? Good at conveying information, but also consistent with what educated people would expect?
I have this exact same question. I've found some conventions over the years that have been helpful, but haven't found anything comprehensive.
With regards to what the arrows indicate, I've done dotted line arrows are synchronous, with a solid arrowhead meaning request body and an outlined arrowhead being the response. Then used solid black line with a single solid arrowhead for an asynchronous request.
Check out interaction diagrams for what you describe. Two parties (A and B) would be represented as two columns, moving down the diagram means moving forward in time. The arrow going from one to the other is a message (either an actual message or a function call or something). So A->B means A is signaling (the text and context describe how) B. If B is requesting information, you'd have two arrows. First B<-A, and then A->B with the response (attempted plain text version):
t A B
0 | |
1 |---->| A sends data to B
2 | |
3 |<----| B requests more information from A
4 |---->| A responds
A and B could be people, processes, classes/objects, servers, whatever. The interaction points are described with the context of the diagram and text. (NB: t is not meant to be explicit here, I've included it to illustrate the passage of time going down the diagram.)
87 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadASCII export, so I can put nice diagrams in comments and docstrings. Also possibly (assuming those nice diagrams are unambiguous) a parsing bridge which lets me convert them into data.
The screenshot on monodraw's home look good, might be what I've been looking for.
I’ve been using OmniGraffle for this purpose for ten plus years. They’re gone downhill since moving into the App Store but there certainly are diagramming tools for Mac...
To incorporate a GmbH company (which is similar to an Inc or Limited) you need 25k Euro in Germany.
I'd advise you to post this again when you have an actual software to show, that people can test out. I won't sign up for anything and I believe a lot of people don't really want anymore newsletters and sales pitches in their inbox.
https://github.com/otfried/ipe
It would be nice to improve the interface a bit.
eventually everyone will find out about plantuml (puml) which generates diagrams of all kinds via a simple source file and wonder how they could ever live without it.
http://plantuml.com
Personally Draw.io is the best freeapp already out there (online based or desktop), but lucidchart for paid is great too (much better print capabilities)
+ It's all plaintext. I love working with plaintext for all the usual benefits, so this fits.
+ PUML renderer is technically a free-to-download JAR, so it can presumably[0] integrate well with my Org-mode life.
Cons:
- Try to draw anything more complicated than three boxes and an arrow, and you'll be spending 90% of the time fighting the layout engine.
- It's even worse when you have your own opinion about the desired layout. No way to do that reliably, the result is very brittle.
I generally like it, but I'd like it 100x more if there was a way to explicitly pin some component to absolute coordinates. Or at least a better way for giving layout hints than soft constraints introduced through invisible links.
--
EDIT: A random idea if anyone is developing something PUML-like:
How about separating out layouting a bit, and letting me type in something like that:
And then continue with regular PUML code: Basically, I wish I could draw a picture representing the rough layout of key image components, and have this as a hard constraint on positioning other elements.--
[0] - Presumably, because I gave up on it after couple large-ish diagrams, just before my use has reached the threshold above which I consider Emacs integration.
It is especially frustrating when you add one item to a diagram and ALL the items shift around to completely new places.
Yes, it is missing. Please repost when it exists.
Are there any resources you recommend for learning to make good diagrams? Ie, I love documenting things but I don't have experience in drawing diagrams. I don't know conventions for displaying order of execution, what arrows should indicate (in A->B is A giving information to be? is B requesting information from A? etc).
Are there any good tutorials/classes/whatever on drawing good diagrams? Good at conveying information, but also consistent with what educated people would expect?
With regards to what the arrows indicate, I've done dotted line arrows are synchronous, with a solid arrowhead meaning request body and an outlined arrowhead being the response. Then used solid black line with a single solid arrowhead for an asynchronous request.
1. http://www.fmc-modeling.org/quick-intro
2. https://c4model.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language
Check out interaction diagrams for what you describe. Two parties (A and B) would be represented as two columns, moving down the diagram means moving forward in time. The arrow going from one to the other is a message (either an actual message or a function call or something). So A->B means A is signaling (the text and context describe how) B. If B is requesting information, you'd have two arrows. First B<-A, and then A->B with the response (attempted plain text version):
A and B could be people, processes, classes/objects, servers, whatever. The interaction points are described with the context of the diagram and text. (NB: t is not meant to be explicit here, I've included it to illustrate the passage of time going down the diagram.)It's now as a website, but I have the server version and use it at least once a week to crank out interactions
The 90's are on the horn, they want to know when this will be shrinked-wrapped and sold at Best Buy.
Why is this even on HN?