[HN Gopher] Svgbob - Create a graphical representation of text d...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Svgbob - Create a graphical representation of text diagrams
        
       Author : pabs3
       Score  : 219 points
       Date   : 2021-07-14 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | quenix wrote:
       | This is neat. I expected something which had a predefined
       | dictionary of ASCII shapes along with manual SVG translations...
       | but this tool is dynamic. It really does create the shapes as you
       | draw them.
       | 
       | Super cool!
        
       | iGu35 wrote:
       | > Svgbob - Create a graphical representation of your text
       | diagrams
        
       | marcuskaz wrote:
       | Very cool! I have a simple terminal graph tool that I can pipe
       | the ascii graphs into svgbob and it converts pretty well to an
       | svg graphic.
       | 
       | Termgraph: https://github.com/mkaz/termgraph
        
       | iGu35 wrote:
       | kr9dMtK
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | spam account?
        
       | Daemon404 wrote:
       | The demo seems to never load for me on Android Chrome? It sits
       | with an off-center spinner forever.
        
       | anigbrowl wrote:
       | Really gorgeous: never having to look at another ASCII diagram
       | makes my day. I'm often surprised that SCG isn't more ubiquitous,
       | as it's objectively better than raster graphics for so many
       | things.
        
       | m000 wrote:
       | Convert your ascii pinup collection to scalable vectors to print
       | and decorate your room!
        
       | thangalin wrote:
       | Kroki can render Svgbob along with numerous other text-based
       | diagram formats, including Graphviz:
       | 
       | https://kroki.io/
       | 
       | KeenWrite[0], my text editor, renders changes to text diagrams in
       | quasi-real-time by calling out to Kroki. Meaning, you can embed
       | Svgbob in Markdown documents using:                   ```
       | diagram-svgbob         // diagram text         ```
       | 
       | [0]:
       | https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/scr...
        
       | Minor49er wrote:
       | This is really interesting to play around with. There are some
       | heuristics that are being used that seemed odd to me until I
       | remembered that this is supposed to be for diagramming, not
       | necessarily for ASCII art.
       | 
       | For instance, this draws an obtuse angle and a right angle that
       | are not connected to each other:                 _/|__
       | 
       | This simply adds height to the right angle, but does not connect
       | them:                   .          _/|__
       | 
       | But this connects both angles together with a sharp point:
       | +          _/|__
       | 
       | Also, a bit of a nitpick: while I love the amount of examples, I
       | wish they were sectioned off rather than having all of the
       | unformatted text in a single textarea on the left and all
       | rendered images on the right. Trying to scroll the page, I keep
       | scrolling the textarea instead, which breaks the alignment.
       | 
       | Overall, super cool project. I'm looking forward to trying this
       | in real world scenarios soon
        
       | cgufus wrote:
       | Has anyone tried to pipe ascii star wars through it?
        
         | tut-urut-utut wrote:
         | Something I wanted to check too, but too lazy to do it.
         | 
         | Actually, I was to lazy to even ask here, so thanks for asking.
         | 
         | Let's hope someone even lazier can just upvote without
         | replying.
         | 
         | /s
        
       | degenerate wrote:
       | I'm way more impressed by some of those ASCII charts than I am of
       | the SVG conversion. The one that looks like a temperature scale
       | from 2011-2016 is super cool.
        
         | keehun wrote:
         | Check out monodraw[1] which could help you create charts like
         | these! (I'm not affiliated with monodraw in any way.)
         | 
         | [1]: https://monodraw.helftone.com/
        
       | maartenh wrote:
       | Bonus points for the name! Happy little diagrams.
       | 
       | I do think that creating and updating these kind of diagrams
       | would be quite tedious. I'd take a DSL (PlantUML, Graphviz,
       | Structurizr) over graphical tools though. At $JOB we also use
       | Miro at the moment, and that tool has a way to see changes since
       | your last visit. I'd much rather be able to approve a change in a
       | diagram via a pull request review.
       | 
       | That makes me wonder, do any of you know about content management
       | systems that are GUI based, but are able to have a pull-request
       | like workflow?
        
         | eurasiantiger wrote:
         | DSL all the way for this. Imagine refactoring ASCII art.
        
         | faeyanpiraat wrote:
         | would a graphical highlight of the changes on the images help?
        
           | maartenh wrote:
           | Given the type of operations one could do such as moving,
           | changing and deleting pieces, that might be quite tricky.
           | 
           | With text, it might be relatively easy to compare the final
           | states. In case of free-form graphics, that could be a lot
           | harder!
        
       | mk12 wrote:
       | This tool is great. I used it for diagrams[1][2] in my SICP
       | project after trying lots of alternatives. It was the only one
       | that allowed me to reach my goal of having pristine source that
       | stands on its own, but also renders to a nice web page. I also
       | use svgo and do some custom post-processing[3] to simplify the
       | output.
       | 
       | [1] https://mk12.github.io/sicp/text/2/2.html#2.2.1 (generated
       | from
       | https://github.com/mk12/sicp/blob/master/notes/text.md#221-r...)
       | 
       | [2] https://mk12.github.io/sicp/exercise/2/2.html#ex2.42
       | (generated from
       | https://github.com/mk12/sicp/blob/master/src/sicp/chapter-2....)
       | 
       | [3]
       | https://github.com/mk12/sicp/blob/master/notes/pandoc/render...
        
       | alpaca128 wrote:
       | Neat. I like how it more or less directly translates the input
       | instead of trying to guess shapes. That's definitely the better
       | approach for real scenarios.
       | 
       | Not sure why it concatenates some of the words in the demo, but
       | it's pointless for normal text, so probably not important.
        
       | alexaholic wrote:
       | I don't need it, but I like it
        
       | synergy20 wrote:
       | Nice, I'm too more impressed by the txt format of graphs.
       | 
       | Is there a tool to convert SVG back to text graph? That would
       | help text-based file as document a lot.
        
         | synergy20 wrote:
         | https://asciiflow.com/ can draw ascii arts, pretty handy and
         | enough for most use cases for me.
        
         | ramboldio wrote:
         | If there would be the conversion in two direction, this would
         | be super helpful to for code comments incl. a graphic editor
         | inside the IDE.
        
         | diplodocusaur wrote:
         | an imperfect answer: SVG -> JPEG ->
         | https://github.com/cslarsen/jp2a (ignoring the S in SVG but
         | scalable ascii art could be interesting)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Some past threads:
       | 
       |  _Svgbob - convert ASCII diagrams to SVG, now with styling
       | support_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22325720 - Feb
       | 2020 (33 comments)
       | 
       |  _Svgbob: Convert your ASCII diagram scribbles into happy little
       | SVG_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19857349 - May 2019
       | (35 comments)
       | 
       |  _Convert ASCII scribbles to SVG_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422777 - May 2017 (13
       | comments)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | mbar84 wrote:
       | https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/
        
         | neolefty wrote:
         | And http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/
        
       | esens wrote:
       | Very neat and well done.
       | 
       | I wonder how hard it would be to make one that takes hand drawn
       | input and converts it to professional like charts. Basically pick
       | the symbol output style and it converts your hand drawn charts to
       | this.
        
       | ok123456 wrote:
       | Let this loose on some 80s BBS textfiles.
        
       | iGu35 wrote:
       | > Svgbob - Create a graphical representation of your text
       | diagrams
       | 
       | > Svgbob - Create a graphical representation of your text
       | diagrams
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-07-14 23:01 UTC)