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Ask HN: How do you build diagrams for the web?

1 points by scythmic_waves ↗ HN
Do you use SVG? Canvas? Something else? If so, why? And what's your process?

When explaining a technical topic, I've sometimes found myself wanting to make a visual aid of some sort. But there seems to be a huge landscape of tools and I don't know what I should invest in learning.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

8 comments

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billconan
Are you asking about the technology to build diagram on web? or what tools to use for creating diagrams?

Because SVG and canvas are technologies, not tools. You then said your intention is to explain technical topics?

scythmic_waves
To clarify: my goal is to create visual aids and embed them in an HTML document. So I want diagrams _for_ the web and not necessarily built _by_ a browser.

For instance, one person's approach could be to use the Inkscape software to create SVGs. Another approach could be to use JS to call the Canvas API. Another is to use Tikz.

Because there are so many approaches, each requiring a heavy investment in learning, I was curious if any in the HN crowd have strong preferences.

sargstuff
Examples based on expected environement generating visuals from / presenting visuals:

a) interactive [2i] & [2iii] / non-interactive

b) generating data for visuals via: sketches by hand[0], gui/command line[1], via database/spreadsheet/ide[2]

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[0] i) : https://www.skillshare.com/en/blog/how-to-digitize-a-sketch-...

   ii) : https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-convert-any-text-into-a-graph-of-concepts-110844f22a1a

  iii) : https://zapier.com/blog/best-wireframe-tools/
**

[1] i) overleaf : https://www.overleaf.com/

   ii) tiz and pgf packages : https://tikz.dev/ / https://texample.net/tikz/examples/area/physics/

  iii) ggplot : https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/

   iv) gnuplot : http://gnuplot.info/
**

[2] i) jupyter / jupyterlab: https://jupyter.org/

   ii) impress : https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Impress_Guide/Introducing_Impress

  iii) graphana : https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/grafana-with-postgresql-data-visualization-with-open-source-tool-36f5150fa290