[HN Gopher] Monodraw
___________________________________________________________________
Monodraw
Author : saikatsg
Score : 825 points
Date : 2024-03-09 14:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (monodraw.helftone.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (monodraw.helftone.com)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I love this tool. This is one of those that you buy it and keep
| it, even if you use it once a while.
| saikatsg wrote:
| The website design is also neat.
| dfee wrote:
| Have you had this for a long time, or are you speculating that
| it's the type of software you like?
|
| This looks very cool to me, though. If you have used it, can
| you share how you've used the generated diagrams? I can imagine
| a screenshot of the diagram, but the raw text would probably be
| too big in (e.g. a terminal).
| ryanschneider wrote:
| As other have mentioned I've used it for diagrams in code
| comments and READMEs (before GH added mermaid integration).
|
| Making readable diagrams with 80 character width can be a
| challenge.
|
| I bought it back in either late 2017 or early 2018 and used
| it a fair amount at first but will admit it's been a couple
| years since and haven't tried reinstalling since my last
| clean OS wipe.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| 1Passwords shows that I bought a license on April 6, 2017.
| loganlinn wrote:
| I bought license to Monodraw in 2018 and have used it off and
| on since, so I can attest to GP
| dorian-graph wrote:
| > Have you had this for a long time ..
|
| Similar to the OP, I've had it for years, and used it every
| and now then through those years.
|
| > .. can you share how you've used the generated diagrams?
|
| The website mentions exporting in text and images. I use the
| text importing (to clipboard), with "Trim trailing
| whitespace".
|
| > .. but the raw text would probably be too big in (e.g. a
| terminal).
|
| It's as big or small as you want it to be? With the obvious
| constraints of the different banner styles. People have had
| ASCII banners in consoles for decades, there's nothing new
| about the ASCII banners from Monodraw.
| jasonm23 wrote:
| Try installing figlet, for banner text.
|
| At its simplest: figlet "Text"
|
| or use fonts figlet -f small "Small Text"
| ___ _ _ _____ _ / __|_ __ __ _|
| | | |_ _|____ _| |_ \__ \ ' \/ _` | | | | |/ -_)
| \ / _| |___/_|_|_\__,_|_|_| |_|\___/_\_\\__|
| grimgrin wrote:
| what's the native linux alternative? aka not a webapp
|
| edit: hm, maybe https://github.com/nkh/P5-App-Asciio
| flylikeabanana wrote:
| One way would be to use emacs' artist-mode to draw ascii lines
| and boxes then use ditaa[1] to transform them into images. It's
| not a pretty packaged GUI app but it's certainly an option
|
| [1] https://ditaa.sourceforge.net/
| amlib wrote:
| Fairly new and barebones for now, but it is available as a
| flatpak: https://github.com/Nokse22/ascii-draw
| strobe wrote:
| emacs artist mode also suitable for something like that
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JZ6ljIRGus
| fbdab103 wrote:
| For anyone who is willing to use a webapp, I like drawio[0].
| You can download locally[1] and self host (I just use the
| python webserver).
|
| While finding the Github, I see they now actually package an
| Electron application, so that is probably worth exploring[2].
|
| [0] https://www.drawio.com/
|
| [1] https://github.com/jgraph/drawio
|
| [2] https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop
| rihards__ wrote:
| DrawIO feature to save editable PNGs (embedded diagram source
| code) is absolutely magical.
|
| The tool is quite basic, until you realize, you can create
| reusable blocks (in scratchpad) with predifened style.
|
| From that point on you just publish editable PNGs to git and
| draw them rather quickly by dropping in predefined blocks.
| MithrilTuxedo wrote:
| I've been using PlantUML, having come from using GraphViz.
|
| I can't tell is has any relation to this. I use it to generate
| SVGs in Maven documentation site builds.
| internetter wrote:
| Also not native, but huydotnet mentioned this in another
| comment and it looks great
| https://github.com/tuanchauict/MonoSketch
| yla92 wrote:
| https://asciiflow.com/#/ works pretty well.
| anthk wrote:
| get gramscii and aamath
| joshlemer wrote:
| This went into "maintenance mode" in 2018, has anything changed?
| https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance-mode/
| marcusjt wrote:
| https://x.com/Monodraw suggests there have indeed been updates
| graypegg wrote:
| To be fair, the last tweet is from 2 years ago.
|
| However, I've made pretty good use of it, and it's really a
| "complete" product. Not much more to update than the
| occasional mandatory platform upgrade.
| airstrike wrote:
| From the FAQ at the bottom
|
| _> Why not open source the app?_ _>_ _> Maintaining an open-
| source project can be a significant amount of work and I 'm not
| going to have the time to take on such responsibilities.
| Furthermore, open-sourcing full products tends to result in
| many clones being sold directly to unsuspecting customers which
| is not something I want to enable._
|
| It's strange how both of those statements are incorrect...
| open-sourcing a project allows for contributors to pick up some
| of the workload and certain licenses would prevent clones from
| being sold to unsuspecting customers
| arccy wrote:
| a license doesn't magically stop bad things from happening.
| airstrike wrote:
| it doesn't, but it's a deterrent. the very fact that this
| app had limited commercial success is reason to believe
| there likely won't be "many clones", especially if they're
| forced to go against the license
| thenanyu wrote:
| As someone who has worked on an open source product with a
| commercial version, the FAQ matches my experience. I think
| you're letting you're mixing up is and ought.
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Contributors don't magically appear. Maintaining a community,
| reviewing changes, steering, etc. all take time and energy.
| Again, contributors don't magically appear who can do those
| things, who are aligned with the creator.
|
| Licenses don't magically stop bad actors.
|
| Both statements by the author are correct.
| milen wrote:
| Developer of Monodraw here.
|
| Thank you all for the kind words regarding the app.
|
| Unfortunately, my time is extremely limited which is why I
| haven't had the chance to push more updates out.
|
| I've got a few highly requested features in the works but I
| cannot promise when they'll see the light of day (I usually get
| to make progress during my holidays).
|
| I'm still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades
| and ensuring the product continues to work.
| accessvector wrote:
| Thanks for your work in making an excellent tool; I, and many
| of my coworkers, use this. The price point is entirely fair
| and it's a pleasure to use every time. But - above this -
| thank you also for prioritising personal life above
| development.
|
| It's great as it is and we'll be happy to see new features
| when you're ready. I would be really proud if I were in your
| position.
|
| Cheers!
| milen wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words!
| hanniabu wrote:
| Curious what some of the requested features are since it
| seems feature complete to me
| milen wrote:
| The main requests have been for:
|
| - Plaintext format (in progress) - Dark mode support for
| the main canvas (in progress) - Auto/Dynamic Layout - Table
| support - ANSI export
| supertron wrote:
| > Dark mode support
|
| Hell yeah! I'm a long time user of Monodraw (thanks for
| the awesome work!) and this would be an instant upgrade
| for me :)
| marcellus23 wrote:
| What does "plaintext format" mean? Isn't it already
| plaintext?
| jasonm23 wrote:
| to offer a guess, I assume plantext probably means plain
| ASCII or maybe extended US ASCII (adds IBM box drawing
| chars, etc.) As opposed to full unicode text charset.
| nikolay wrote:
| Thank you, Milen! It's nice to see Bulgarians being behind a
| popular desktop app! I've been a paid user for years and
| Monodraw is among the first apps I install when I get a new
| MacBook machine!
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Thank you so much for Monodraw! I've used it on and off for
| _years_.
| cachvico wrote:
| Hi - I'm not a user but I am reacting to obvious love many
| developers have for your app.
|
| Have you thought about open-sourcing it?
|
| Or even keeping it closed source but crowd-sourcing help?
|
| No need for profit sharing - your income is a nominal
| management fee if that. Just need a nice credits page to give
| thanks to the names of the people who contributed.
|
| Might work?
| z5h wrote:
| Owned this for years, and regularly use it to brainstorm, and
| sometimes I'll add ascii diagrams to code comments.
| huydotnet wrote:
| Awesome tool! Also, for the web version, my friend made an
| alternative written in Kotlin
| https://github.com/tuanchauict/MonoSketch
|
| I also have a half baked version in Rust too
| https://github.com/huytd/ascii-d
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I love this tool!
|
| I've used it to do diagrams for Mapless:
|
| https://sebastianconcept.github.io/Mapless/guides/2024/01/28...
|
| And to document this Pharo VM Plugin builder setup:
|
| https://github.com/sebastianconcept/PharoPluginBuilder
| James_K wrote:
| So you used an ASCII drawing tool to draw these diagrams in
| text then took a screenshot of them and uploaded to your
| website? That seems like such a convoluted way to draw a few
| rectangles. Isn't there an easier way?
| k12sosse wrote:
| Think different.
| mjochim wrote:
| Doesn't seem more convoluted than any other drawing tool to
| me. The UI of Monodraw appears to be pretty similar to
| "regular" drawing software.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| 1. You can just "Save as" to PNG, it takes no time or effort.
|
| 2. I use to use Monodraw exclusively for making diagrams in
| source code, but over time I've become so comfortable with
| the tool, keyboard shortcuts, etc. that now I just use it for
| all diagrams. It's a very nice tool.
| James_K wrote:
| If you feel the need to embed giant ASCII diagrams into a
| source file, I think you should just use a picture. Like a
| .png or .svg or something and write the documentation in
| another file. Or even maybe try out rich text source code.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Please don't do things like this that make it harder for
| people to read your comments.
| James_K wrote:
| Writing documentation is typically an addition to writing
| comments. They serve different purposes. That said,
| adding a diagram to a comment will only make it easier to
| read. It is an addition. It cannot make things harder.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| If only it were true, that additions cannot nake things
| harder to read.
| James_K wrote:
| In this case, it is absolutely true. It is the difference
| between: // some comment
|
| and // some comment // additionally
| see ./diagram.png
|
| Diagrams are often useful tools for communicating
| information.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's not the difference I'm talking about; I'm talking
| about the difference between // some
| comment // ... 25 lines of a diagram
|
| and // some comment // additionally
| see ./diagram.png
| misnome wrote:
| Thanks! I'm sure they never thought of that!
|
| Or maybe they did, and there are advantages and tradeoffs
| to any approach.
|
| I'm sure your unique insight must be right, though.
| James_K wrote:
| You don't need to get so annoyed on someone else's
| behalf. I am just putting my opinion out there -
| specifically that I would prefer just an image file that
| is referenced from a comment. I'm sure this person knows
| what an image is; I was not trying to imply that they
| didn't.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| The diagrams I am pasting in are usually like 80 x 40
| chars and keep you from having to tab out into
| documentation. They don't change often so they don't
| create messy diffs. I don't think that's unreasonable.
| Nobody on my team seems to mind. I don't think this is a
| problem and I'm having trouble understanding why you
| think it is.
|
| If you're wondering why I need diagrams in source code,
| then the answer is I usually don't _need_ them but it
| helps. The only project where they were game changing was
| where we were using Neo4j as a backend and being able to
| clearly diagram the data model was really helpful.
| James_K wrote:
| I don't really have much of an issue with it. It's got
| bad vibes by association. I find it a little annoying how
| much stuff is done with text, and this is just a small
| part of that.
| Terretta wrote:
| At least for the README, the diagram remains text in three
| backticks.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| In the second link, about the Smalltalk VM plugin, you can
| see is pre-formatted text in markdown.
|
| In the Mapless guide, when I've kept it as text (as the first
| preferred way to have it done) it became challenging to make
| it work for all screen sizes and an image was the "good
| enough" approach for the case.
| lsllc wrote:
| Love this too -- I use this to document source code, being able
| to visualize a buffer or structure layout in the code is so
| nice!
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Funny. The front page (still) states:
|
| "We're a small studio that loves to make delightful apps. We just
| launched Monodraw."
|
| The blog says:
|
| Maintenance Mode With immediate effect, Monodraw is entering
| maintenance mode. This means that there will be no more updates
| in the future. While I'll be aiming to provide OS compatibility
| updates, if required, those are not guaranteed. Accordingly, the
| price has been reduced from $19.99 to $9.99.
|
| Why?
|
| Monodraw was released in May 2015, about three and a half years
| ago. Unfortunately, it did not achieve commercial success and it
| meant I had to get a job. In the years that followed, I could
| only work on Monodraw in my spare time. Due to recent changes in
| my life, I can no longer devote any meaningful time to the app.
| ""
|
| https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance-mode/
| andai wrote:
| And thanks to being proprietary, no one else can devote time to
| it, either.
| jorts wrote:
| It's perfectly fine that it's proprietary. Just because it
| exists doesn't mean other people are entitled to the source
| code.
| andai wrote:
| I agree. Nobody owes anyone anything!
|
| I was merely pointing out that it's a shame that
|
| (1) it has apparently been abandoned for years,
|
| (2) people are not able to do anything about that.
|
| (Bus factor == 1, etc.)
|
| Based on the other comments in the thread, I'm sure there
| are people who would love to contribute.
|
| (Worth pointing out that making something open source isn't
| zero-maintenance by any means, especially since GitHub
| still doesn't let you disable pull requests...)
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| There's a cost to open-sourcing code. It takes effort. You
| must write documentation and clean up your code in many
| ways. It's good to "clean up code" of course but is that
| the most urgent thing on your task-list?
|
| Who should pay for that effort? The original author? Yes if
| they think it's worth it and they can afford to spend the
| time on it.
|
| There's also a risk whenever you publish source-code,
| someone might sue you for copyright infringement, or patent
| violation, etc.
| milen wrote:
| I've toyed with the idea of open sourcing the product. I
| reached the conclusion that it's not the approach for two
| main reasons:
|
| - I believe in a strong, centralised product vision and
| execution - The code will be packaged up and sold by
| unscrupulous people who will not contribute back
|
| I'm a strong advocate of interoperability and open data
| formats. The Monodraw data format is not proprietary and I do
| have plans for a plain text format (currently, it's just
| zipped JSON which doesn't play nice with VCS).
|
| Interoperability is key to competition and avoiding lock-in,
| so I'll push in that direction as my time permits.
| techn00 wrote:
| > The code will be packaged up and sold by unscrupulous
| people who will not contribute back
|
| Choose a good license then
| milen wrote:
| A license wouldn't stop the unscrupulous people, they'll
| keep making clones of it and ignoring the license.
|
| This means I have to start chasing any clones, engage
| legally and try to take them down. It's just not worth
| the time - I would rather spend the time on improving
| Monodraw instead.
| synthmeat wrote:
| To voice support for current state - do what you're
| already doing, and I agree on focusing on opening up the
| format.
|
| Don't hesitate to charge for v2, if improvements pile up
| and you have affordances to do so. Will gladly pay.
|
| It's pretty great already as-is. Thank you.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If unscrupulous people are willing to ignore the license
| anyway, wouldn't they just hex edit to change the
| branding to sell clones even while it's closed source?
| lumb63 wrote:
| I understand your concerns about open-sourcing the codebase
| and won't try to convince you otherwise. It's your code.
|
| That said, I would like to share my perspective on the
| subject, having given some thought to if/how I should open
| source my code. I don't feel that I have any ground to
| stand on if I were to choose _not_ to open source my code.
| That same code would be uploaded to the internet using a
| web browser or other tool that is open source. That code is
| probably compiled or interpreted by a tool that's open
| source. For me, it all runs on an operating system that's
| open source. Nearly everything that I am able to do as a
| software developer is built on the shoulders of giants who,
| out of kindness and conviction in their beliefs, chose to
| make an entire ecosystem of software available to the
| world, with source code available, free of charge. I feel
| that I owe it to the world to pay that legacy forward.
| andai wrote:
| Aye, but you're commenting on a Mac program, which is
| necessarily developed on a closed, anti-competitive
| system (and in the context of that ecosystem, accepting
| it as normal). GP lives in a much darker world than you.
| andai wrote:
| > I believe in a strong, centralised product vision and
| execution
|
| Fair point! I'm reminded of this quote from Jaron Lanier:
|
| > Why are so many of the more sophisticated examples of
| code in the online world--like the page-rank algorithms in
| the top search engines or like Adobe's Flash--the results
| of proprietary development? Why did the adored iPhone come
| out of what many regard as the most closed, tyrannically
| managed software-development shop on Earth?
|
| >An honest empiricist must conclude that while the open
| approach has been able to create lovely, polished copies,
| it hasn't been so good at creating notable originals. Even
| though the open-source movement has a stinging
| countercultural rhetoric, it has in practice been a
| conservative force.
|
| I love free software, yet most of the software I use is
| proprietary. (I consider my own apathy as contributing to
| the problem...)
|
| As for this point,
|
| - The code will be packaged up and sold by unscrupulous
| people who will not contribute back
|
| an interesting example is Jason Rohrer, who has open
| sourced all (?) his games.
|
| The way he got around this is that he made a multiplayer
| game, where the $20 in effect gave you access to the main
| server. People indeed repackaged his game, sold it on other
| platforms etc. Yet last I checked, he was doing better than
| ever. (Probably cause he keeps pushing out updates to keep
| the game interesting.)
|
| Not sure how well this works for "single-player software",
| although Aseprite seems to be doing all right. (Though
| technically not free software anymore, despite being open-
| source...)
| hn_acker wrote:
| Nitpick: Aseprite is source-available, not open source by
| the Open Source Initiative's definition. From the
| Aseprite EULA [1]:
|
| > (g) Source code.
|
| > You may only compile and modify the source code of the
| SOFTWARE PRODUCT for your own personal purpose or to
| propose a contribution to the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
|
| The OSI's definition of open source [2] permits
| distribution of unmodified and modified copies (with the
| exception of _lone_ , unmodified copies; I read somewhere
| that adding a hello world program is a workaround):
|
| > 1. Free Redistribution
|
| > The license shall not restrict any party from selling
| or giving away the software as a component of an
| aggregate software distribution containing programs from
| several different sources. The license shall not require
| a royalty or other fee for such sale.
|
| ...
|
| > 3. Derived Works
|
| > The license must allow modifications and derived works,
| and must allow them to be distributed under the same
| terms as the license of the original software.
|
| "free software" is ambiguous to English speakers/writers,
| but "open source" is ambiguous in its own way.
|
| By the way, there is a "Fork of the last GPLv2 commit of
| Aseprite" called Libresprite [3].
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/blob/main/EULA.txt
|
| [2] https://opensource.org/osd
|
| [3] https://github.com/LibreSprite/LibreSprite
| milen wrote:
| Developer of Monodraw here.
|
| I haven't updated the official website (priorities and lack of
| free time).
|
| I've pushed out some updates after the maintenance mode
| announcement but the frequency is not guaranteed since my free
| time is extremely limited.
|
| I'm still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades
| and ensuring the product continues to work.
|
| While I have some new features in the pipeline, I cannot commit
| to any timelines as I don't know when I will ship them.
|
| I want to thank everyone who's supported the product throughout
| the years, it means a lot to me.
|
| Happy to answer any further questions.
| commandersaki wrote:
| It may not have reached commercial success, but to me it's
| the best commercial application on MacOS. Nothing comes close
| in value.
| lsllc wrote:
| Please not more app-store abandonware. I have a decent amount
| on both my phone and my MBP. Sad to see, I really liked
| Monodraw for creating ASCII illustrations for source code (e.g.
| buffer layouts etc).
|
| Of course, probably it'll be ok for a while, but then some App
| Store API or updated processor requirements will render it
| unusable like so many others (particularly on iOS).
|
| So now I've got several abandonware apps that I paid for:
| Things (v1), Quiver, Artboard and now Monodraw. I can't say
| _any_ of them really had any non-minor updates since I got them
| certainly not features (yes, I realize Things did a separate V2
| app ... but I wasn 't happy about that happening so soon after
| buying V1). I do realize some of this is Apple's fault in the
| way the store is structured.
|
| Too bad Apple doesn't enact some sort of source-code escrow
| such that if an app is abandoned, the source gets published,
| but with owner-copyright retained so no-one can resell -- as
| part of the T&C of submitting an app. Maybe after 1 year of
| abandonment for a "big" company and 2 years for indie-dev apps.
|
| *EDIT*: Happy to see Milen's sibling comment about fixing
| breakage!! I realize you have to make a living -- is there a
| way to contribute for these new features (or is it a totally
| new app -- which is fine!).
| milen wrote:
| > _EDIT_ : Happy to see Milen's sibling comment about fixing
| breakage!! I realize you have to make a living -- is there a
| way to contribute for these new features (or is it a totally
| new app -- which is fine!).
|
| I've considered the idea of letting other developers have
| access to the source code and help with the development.
| Unfortunately, I couldn't figure a way to make it fair -
| e.g., if someone starts contributing, do they start receiving
| a percentage of the proceeds? What's a fair percentage and
| what about multiple external contributors?
|
| I could never come up with a workable model, so it's either
| fully open-source or proprietary. As I mentioned in another
| comment, I believe the way to go is an open data format which
| allows interoperability. This way there's no lock-in and
| competing apps (open or closed) can exist.
|
| For what it's worth, the Monodraw data format is not secret,
| it's just compressed JSON. I haven't documented it because
| it's more of an implementation detail and I'd rather spend my
| very limited time on improving the product.
|
| Hope that provides a bit more context.
| lsllc wrote:
| Thank you for the comment, apologies if I came off a bit
| antagonistic! It's just a little frustrating when you see
| really great apps potentially ending.
|
| It's really too bad there's not a better indie-dev model
| for the App Store, if I am buying an app (I think maybe I
| maybe paid $19 for Monodraw -- totally worth it btw), am I
| buying the app as-is? or do I get updates ... if so how
| long should I expect to get them and are the updates minor
| fixes or bigger whizbang features.
|
| I can see that once an app gets to a steady state, there's
| probably diminishing returns in putting a lot of effort
| into new features esp. if your market is small. On the
| other hand, if the app has some sort of subscription, now
| there is an expectation for updates (not unreasonable, but
| possibly the numbers might not work for the developer).
|
| I think Pixelmoter sort of got this right, although they
| did release a Pro version separately (which I also bought).
| However, I suspect they're a much larger company and
| probably have quite a large market share and can afford to
| continue to release updates to keep it fresh (and for
| someone like me, the app is exactly what I need vs. say
| photoshop and the price point is reasonable).
| andai wrote:
| At this point, the only apps worth using were released 10
| years ago, and have all been removed from Play Store. I have
| to either use my own backups or download sketchy APKs. I'm
| not exaggerating, today I tried a number of shoddy disk space
| analyzers full of bloat and ads, until giving up and just
| using one from 2014... (except it'd been deleted, so I had to
| do a bit of digging.)
| zokier wrote:
| Stretching the idea of "plain text" quite far imho.
| Solvency wrote:
| These used to be called Macro Shops back in the 90s AOL
| prog/punter scene.
|
| There used to be thousands of truly incredible ASCII macro
| artworks. This is barely scratching the surface.
|
| https://i0.wp.com/justinakapaste.com/wp-content/uploads/2014...
| paulirish wrote:
| Looks nice. https://asciiflow.com/ is a web-based alternative
| that's been my go-to for a decade.
| russellendicott wrote:
| I use ASCIIFlow all the time. I still haven't figured out how
| to get browsers to render the monospace fonts correctly see
| example diagram on this page: http://uggly.bytester.net/#how-
| it-works
| Retr0id wrote:
| Looks fine on my machine - my guess is that your primary font
| does not contain all the glyphs used (e.g. the box-drawing
| chars), so its falling back to another font just for those
| glyphs, causing inconsistencies.
| russellendicott wrote:
| It seems to only mess it up on mobile. Desktop Chrome seems
| fine. Mobile Chrome is all I've tested on.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Ah, in that case you might want: text-
| size-adjust: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust:
| none;
|
| (it's infuriating that these options need to exist!)
| golem14 wrote:
| How do you set options for chrome on iPhone and android?
|
| Sorry for the naive question, I never figured this out.
| Retr0id wrote:
| These are in-page CSS controls, not browser config
| options (no idea how those works, I avoid mobile
| platforms)
| jasonm23 wrote:
| You could use a browser that supports extensions on
| Andriod, iOS will protect you from such _nefarious_
| things though.
| Retr0id wrote:
| iOS supports browser extensions, and has done for some
| time - e.g. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/makeover-
| custom-css/id16023611... (which demonstrates custom HN
| CSS in the demo screenshots!)
| tracker1 wrote:
| First is using a monospace font, second is aligning line
| height to font height. Third includes a bit of tweaking and
| trying different sizes.
|
| Your best bet is to use a good fixed width don't with broad
| character support. Some are better or worse than others.
| Cascadia Code and Fira Code work pretty well with differing
| characteristics and both have nerd don't variants.
|
| Emoji alignment is another problem.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| Doesn't look like screen readers can read the text on these.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I believe you can treat it as if it were an image by putting
| it an element with attributes role="img" aria-
| label="description of the diagram goes here"
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A...
| Veuxdo wrote:
| The problem is, having to describe a diagram using text
| defeats the purpose of the diagram. Must better is to use
| diagrams that render as SVG, so screen readers can read
| them. [0]
|
| [0] https://accessibility.princeton.edu/how/design/images-
| text
| Retr0id wrote:
| A flowchart involving labeled boxes with arrows between
| them is going to be more accessible as an SVG than a PNG,
| sure, but you're still going to need to explain what the
| arrows are doing, otherwise a screenreader user will be
| quite lost.
| seer wrote:
| OMG this is one of my favorite tools paid for it all the way back
| when it went out. Have used it so many times just to write
| documentation for things like:
|
| https://github.com/ivank/potygen/blob/main/packages/potygen/...
|
| ASCII is just so versatile and allows you to put nice graphics in
| places where one does not expect, making things more easily
| understandable.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Those corners look like Unicode block chars.
| diggan wrote:
| ASCII means more than just characters from the ASCII
| character standard today, for better or worse. The "modern"
| translation would be something like "text".
|
| I don't agree or disagree with it, so don't argue with me,
| just trying to explain how people use it today.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Anyone can write that a word no longer has its defined
| meaning. That can't even be refuted, as it's certain
| someone is confused somewhere.
|
| However, ASCII is not a random ancient word, it's a
| ratified standard. Would be like calling any datetime
| format "ISO8601".
| samatman wrote:
| Context is important, ya know? If we're talking about
| text encodings, that's one thing, but we're talking about
| drawing. "ASCII text" drawing was never entirely limited
| to ASCII even in the days of single-byte encodings. There
| were code pages which used the high bit for more useful
| drawing glyphs, people took advantage of that when they
| could.
|
| The concept of an extended ASCII encoding goes way back:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_ASCII, and UTF-8
| is just another extended ASCII encoding, albeit a very
| clever one, with a lot of codepoints.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Extended supersets of a thing are not the thing, they are
| a larger group.
| diggan wrote:
| > However, ASCII is not a random ancient word, it's a
| ratified standard
|
| Even so, ask around and you'll find debates about which
| ASCII standard is the "right" and "true" one. Some argue
| only the initial standard is correct for ASCII art, you
| need to follow that, others say any of the versions are
| alright.
|
| It's still ambiguous.
| eichin wrote:
| Yeah, "BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT UP AND LEFT" and "BOX DRAWINGS
| LIGHT DOWN AND LEFT". (If this were ASCII, it would have used
| | ("VERTICAL LINE") instead of "BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT
| VERTICAL".)
| tzot wrote:
| I believe here ASCII was used not as in ASCII-the-standard
| but as "ASCII" in ASCII-art. I also believe that ASCII art
| should actually be called "monospaced Unicode text" since
| people doing ASCII art have been using as many codepoints as
| were available in their platform of choice.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You should select the lines you'd like to show off and link
| that.
| diggan wrote:
| You should do a quick scan of the file, it's filled with
| graphs in the comments, not just one.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I did. Sorry, linking seemed like a good idea so it was
| just a suggestion. Maybe OP didn't know that was possible.
| echelon wrote:
| This is a fantastic illustration that sells the software for
| me. Thanks for sharing! I'll have to look into this.
| eichin wrote:
| Hmm, the "With Expression" diagram on line 656 looks fine in
| emacs, but in chrome at that actual link, everything on the
| right is mangled. (The _characters_ look fine, it looks like
| github 's font choices do poorly with the "load bearing
| whitespace" for the extended bits...)
| Thorrez wrote:
| I think it's the < character. It looks like Chrome (I'm on
| Windows) makes it wider than other Characters. I think > has
| this same problem. But from a quick scan, I don't see any
| other place in the file where one of those characters is used
| in a way that it being extra wide would be noticable.
| tracker1 wrote:
| For web it'll really vary by font family availability and
| fallback. Personally I like the nerd don't variant for
| Inconsolata, Cascadia Coffee and Firs Code for fixed width
| usage.
|
| I wish self packaging similar to how Google Fonts does it
| was easier to do. IE breaking up the don't into glyph
| segments to reduce unused characters for languages not
| used.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Just observing, I think this is the first time I've seen
| Unicode symbols outside of basic Latin rendering on HN.
| junon wrote:
| I've always wanted to try this but never had a reason: do
| emojis work on HN? I've never seen one and didn't know if
| it was just a culture thing or if it was enforced:
|
| (tm)
|
| EDIT: Nope! All but the TM "emoji" got stripped.
| notnmeyer wrote:
| monodraw has been one of my favorite diagramming tools, but never
| seemed to be popular with the folks i worked with.
| russellendicott wrote:
| Yeah, I'm known as the ASCII diagram guy at work because I use
| ASCIIFlow a lot. Still not sure if people think I'm a joke.
|
| https://asciiflow.com/#/
| thom wrote:
| I've used this in the past and enjoyed it. My one complaint, if I
| recall, is that you have to use its own built in file format to
| maintain all the cool features like anchors and resizable boxes
| and stuff. You can't just point at at an ASCII drawing in a
| markdown document and get all the functionality for free. I
| suspect if someone really wanted to they could crack that through
| clever algorithms and LLMs - and I've extensively used the latter
| to work on first drafts of ASCII diagrams to some success. But
| I've never found a good balance of maintainability (i.e. a box is
| a box and I can move it and have its connections follow it
| around) and portability (everything really is just pure text). If
| I'm wrong about recent versions of Monodraw or something else
| achieves this I'm all ears! I certainly had more success with
| Monodraw than artist mode in Emacs, at least.
| xp84 wrote:
| Interesting take. Do you have a lot of existing diagrams you'd
| like to manage? If I'm starting from scratch, I would sort of
| expect/want to have the abstract file format like this, seeing
| it as like a PSD, and the output as a rendered, flat image like
| PNG. Or source code vs. binary. Parsing an output artifact back
| into a more semantic and abstract form is hard to get perfect,
| I would imagine.
| thom wrote:
| There are times when I've wanted architecture diagrams to be
| ASCII in markdown, meant to be consumed through GitHub or in
| a Backstage portal or something. For me, the ideal workflow
| would be to just be able to edit those inline but still have
| cool editor features. Maintaining a separate file is just
| hassle, and it's hard enough trying to keep diagrams alive as
| part of documentation as it is.
| mechanicker wrote:
| Awesome tool I purchased when I stumbled upon it.
|
| I draw flowcharts for complex implementations in ASCII using
| Monodraw and embed them in source code.
| mergy wrote:
| Interesting. I have been spending a lot of time with Mermaidjs
| for the last year or so and love it but not around ERDs because
| of the inability to map field relationships the way I want. I
| will check this out.
| zekenie wrote:
| *Love* monodraw. The last 2 times i was on the job market I used
| monodraw extensively for little inline diagrams for my take-home
| projects. It always was a big hit with the reviewers.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Why isn't there a good CLI tool for specifying and rendering
| these?
|
| I'm imagining something like dot -Tascii
| OneOfTheMicahs wrote:
| How accessible are these diagrams to screen readers?
| internetter wrote:
| They aren't
| supertron wrote:
| Monodraw is great. I occasionally use it to document system
| architecture in code comments and project READMEs etc. [0]
|
| Also handy as a quick way to document CSS styles to help
| visualise which parts of a layout a given style targets [1]
|
| [0]
| https://gist.github.com/supertr0n/f006a5f61b60160862ec13024e...
|
| [1]
| https://gist.github.com/supertr0n/462325ec3f7fbea02780039150...
| bayindirh wrote:
| I use Monodraw since the first day it came out. I use it to draw
| software architecture, diagrams, and most importantly login
| banners to the systems I manage personally.
|
| It's a nice, to the point tool.
| constantinum wrote:
| One of the first few tools I install on a new machine. Absolutely
| no subscription nonsense.
| sigma5 wrote:
| how does it compare to excalidraw ?
| ukd1 wrote:
| I've been using this since 2015 - and just found out today they
| have a cli tool! But, I bought through the App Store so it's not
| available for me. For any users, is the cli tool useful?
| methuselah_in wrote:
| No Linux or windows?
| petepete wrote:
| No, but Asciiflow is very good.
|
| https://asciiflow.com/
| anthk wrote:
| try gramscii, and aamath for math formulae.
| adamzerner wrote:
| Hm. I'm interested in hearing more about the specific scenarios
| where this sort of tool is useful.
|
| I skimmed through the HN comments and see that it can be used for
| adding diagrams to code comments. But what else? Slack, Jira,
| READMEs, SMS, Signal etc all allow you to include pngs.
| ksherlock wrote:
| You can use it for mocking up a text user interface.
| eichin wrote:
| What do you mean by READMEs here? Markdown readmes support
| embedding images from external files, which isn't really useful
| if you're looking at the readme directly (or do you use data:
| uris there? Last I looked they had too-severe length limits.)
|
| (I'm also curious what you mean by SMS, or are you conflating
| it with RCS?)
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Messaging apps don't have fixed width apps, I think. You would
| need to pick one app's specific font (idk if Monodraw lets you
| do that), and draw using that.
| thenanyu wrote:
| I got 20% done prototyping an implementation of this for myself.
| Gonna just pay the $10. Thank you!
| trusz wrote:
| I always end back with monodraw. Other apps have too many
| features and style possibilities that you forget about the
| content. With monodraw I never get distracted.
|
| However, it still has enough functionality that you can achieve a
| lot of things. One of my favorites are the anchors. I have even
| created a small demo/tutorial:
| https://tamasruss.com/articles/monodraw-anchors
| Semmel wrote:
| That UML box of a class is really valueable. Great tutorial!
| coffeemug wrote:
| Amazing tool, thank you for building this. One piece of feedback:
| let me pay you without having to fill out a 20 field form. I
| would have happily bought a license through PayPal, but having to
| enter all the info really makes me want to press the back button.
| guestbest wrote:
| When I worked in telecom, this is how people used spreadsheets
| easeout wrote:
| I used this often for diagrams before repository sites' Markdown
| renderers started to support Mermaid. Nice tool; easy and fast.
| Can be a bit fiddly to make changes, depending on how much you
| care about neatness.
| richardw wrote:
| Love it. Triggers memories!
|
| I wrote my own similar-ish version of this for a school project
| in 1991. Although mine wasn't mono, so I could draw in foreground
| colour, preserving the existing text, background colour or text.
| Eg draw a filled in square made up only of background colour
| changes. Obviously this is very different but I love the sense of
| surprisingly good output despite a lot of restrictions.
| fortyseven wrote:
| I'll never understand willingly restricting yourself to one
| desktop platform. Especially with a paid app. Oh well. Looks nice
| LoganDark wrote:
| Sketch, Rogue Amoeba apps, Panic, etc. plenty of Mac-only
| businesses. They make decent money. As Mac users actually tend
| to pay for their software rather than expecting everything to
| be free.
|
| If you released the same software for the same price on
| Windows, not only would it be more difficult to develop (due to
| Windows lacking the same abstractions as macOS), you'd probably
| have way less users, as Windows users don't typically buy apps
| like this.
| m1keil wrote:
| I share similar caution with tools and multi-platforms
| (specifically Mac, Win & Linux). However, the format is
| interchangeable with other Ascii drawing apps and it isn't too
| expensive. So I'm totally fine with it.
| nico wrote:
| Looks amazing
|
| It would be cool if they had an img2asciidiagram that would
| convert something drawn on paper to an ascii, and that could run
| from my phone (similar how GeniusScan works)
|
| Then I could just draw on paper, and scan the diagrams from the
| phone :)
| crooked-v wrote:
| Monodraw has been invaluable to me for creating UX workflow
| mockups that sidestep all the bikeshedding by way of having no
| fine details that people can nitpick.
| felideon wrote:
| > A picture is worth a thousand words. A diagram is probably
| worth twice as much.
|
| Or (sometimes) worth ten thousand words:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6708.1987...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| ASCII art, so great we built a GUI for it
| tooltechgeek wrote:
| I get it, but what about mermaid for diagrams? and free
| smusamashah wrote:
| I maintain a list [1] of main web based text to diagram tools
| including ascii drawing tools like these. Web alternatives for
| this are probably https://fsymbols.com/draw/ or
| https://textik.com/ or https://asciiflow.com/#/ or
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210503172024/https://fatiherik...
| or https://app.monosketch.io
|
| [1]: https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/
| 8ig8 wrote:
| Pikchar is another to consider for your list. From the creator
| of SQLite...
|
| https://pikchr.org/home/doc/trunk/doc/userman.md
| smusamashah wrote:
| It's the second item on the list already.
| lebean wrote:
| Yes but you only listed it once!
| account-5 wrote:
| I was introduced to this recently, still digesting it, looks
| amazing. And no Mac only, and free to boot. Win, win.
| jskherman wrote:
| Have you also checked out some of the lists on
| https://fmhy.net? Some there might be of interest.
| peacebeard wrote:
| Years ago I made a simple one that I still host at
| https://letterbrush.com
| mbar84 wrote:
| Perhaps something for your list:
|
| https://mbarkhau.github.io/asciigrid
| nox101 wrote:
| Thanks for this list. I find all of them are missing features
| that I would want for diagrams I hand made recently. Of the
| ones on this list only one seems to handle diagonals (
| https://textik.com/ ) and that doesn't have a fill function
| AFAIK
|
| The diagram I wanted to draw would be something like this
| https://pastebin.com/NPXFS1Fi
|
| I created the box and triangle in textik.com but I had to
| manually edit a bunch of corners and manually fill it in.
|
| I'm not sure I'd pay for Monodraw. Even though it's only $10 is
| a native app and Mac only. I do so much on the web and use so
| many machines and draw diagrams only a few times a year that I
| think I'd prefer something web based or a VSCode plugin.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Really wish this was cross platform. Would love to use this in
| Linux.
|
| I appreciate the effort that it takes to deliver a polished
| application. I just wish more tooling did better to target Linux,
| Windows and Mac for desktop apps. Probably a larger driver behind
| web based apps.
| azeirah wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that for desktop applications more people
| don't use Qt. It's so good for these kinds of applications!
| aramndrt wrote:
| This reminds me of the old text file format walkthroughs for
| video games. I fondly remember using the The Legend of Zelda:
| Wind Waker walkthrough hosted on IGN. Good times. :')
| joehogans wrote:
| I love monodraw, I buyed it and use it for other developers to
| show complex functions. You can also ask GPT to render Unicode
| diagrams and past it in monodraw if you like.
| hit8run wrote:
| I remember that I bought it through the App Store just to find
| out that they offered a CLI that is only non App Store. Wrote
| them a mail and asked if they could change me to non App Store.
| Never got a reply lol
| stonlyb wrote:
| Is generative ASCII art a thing? Anything tools similar to
| Monodraw out there or possible to assist in taking a description
| and generating an image? Would think even LLM could be trained to
| think of this as some sort of language.
| stonlyb wrote:
| Any examples of free body diagrams (from physics) as ASCII art?
| 0898 wrote:
| Can somebody help me? I've tried Monodraw a few times, but
| whenever I attempt to use the ASCII on a website (Wordpress, if
| that's important) the artwork never appears with the correct
| spacing. The tabs don't show up, or the alignment is off.
|
| So I end up having to create a GIF, which defeats the purpose.
|
| Any ideas?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Are you putting the monodraw text output into a code block or
| using a monospaced font?
| 0898 wrote:
| Which one is the dumb one? Because that's probably the one
| I'm doing.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Either of those options should work for you. Code blocks
| are almost always rendered with monospace fonts and
| manually setting a normal block of text to a monospaced
| font will do what you want as well.
|
| The only other issue I can see is if your diagram is too
| large it might start wrapping which will break the "image"
| you are going for.
|
| EDIT: See my sibling comment for examples of how to do
| this.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Here is an example of me using a code block in Wordpress
| but setting the max width:
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/r3pM1Vzs
|
| Here is how it looks rendered on desktop:
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/dvX5qKvf
|
| Here is how it looks on mobile (broken):
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/pHNdKLxH
|
| It will work if I set a `style="width: 1200px;"` on the
| `<pre>` tag (edit as html):
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/1zTrXZGM
|
| But then Wordpress is going to complain:
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/ctGRh46j
|
| You can always convert the block to HTML so it stop bugging
| you which will look gross in your editors but work when
| displayed:
|
| https://cs.joshstrange.com/8FPgPBXp
|
| I hope this helps!
| 0898 wrote:
| Thanks! This is really helpful - I'll try this out soon.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Is there a markdown flavor that allows for font size changes mid-
| document? It seems like you'd struggle to embed higher-fidelity
| diagrams that don't encounter issues with wrapping in markdown
| unless you can also reduce the font size for some diagrams.
| agarttha wrote:
| Is there a UTF-16 version?
| inoffensivename wrote:
| I haven't seen anybody mention JavE (http://www.jave.de/),
| substantially predates monodraw, but maybe they have different
| features.
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