Live data from Hacker News

Generate Flowcharts from Text

flowchart.fun

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#73
post #16

I would love to see this as a cli, I'm tired of PlantUML's[1] document compilation time. Guess even the plain text tools are made in React nowadays, sigh [1]: https://plantuml.com/

I've had no problems with PlantUML's compilation time. How large are these documents?

There is a plantuml intellij plugin with split screen for text || diagram. Changes in the text are rendered pretty much instantaneously

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#74
post #58

A lot of my emails are becoming like this - structured, bullet points, 'if-then-else' like statement although not that explicit. This could be a nice way to add visualisation to it. Maybe - although everytime I have tried to do something too different with email it has failed.

I’ve started doing the same. Folks’ reading comprehension is in the gutter these days. Bullet points help structure thoughts and ideas.

Is reading comprehension in the gutter, or are people more resistant to emails full of badly-structured fluff?

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#75

I have come to the conclusion there are two kinds of audience and two kinds of diagram, abs they almost exactly overlap 1. Engineering diagrams, explaining concepts to other engineers who are using the diagram as a jumping off point to deeper explorations 2. "Business" diagrams - the sort of thing we want to see in a Medium article or presentation. The style and correct placement matters far more than engineering. Th…

I'm curious if you could get from an 80% solution to a 90% solution by just adding some markup to say things like, "This node should be to the left of this other one?"

Often I use invisible subgraphs to accomplish this sort of thing in GraphViz, but the markup for doing so is complicated and non-obvious.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#77

I have come to the conclusion there are two kinds of audience and two kinds of diagram, abs they almost exactly overlap 1. Engineering diagrams, explaining concepts to other engineers who are using the diagram as a jumping off point to deeper explorations 2. "Business" diagrams - the sort of thing we want to see in a Medium article or presentation. The style and correct placement matters far more than engineering. Th…

I would love to see an integration with excalidraw where you write text to seed the diagram and then do the touch ups with something like excalidraw. That would solve I think your workflow.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#78
This is a great idea! Thank you for sharing.

I noticed an issue for lines that are referenced by links. When I insert a new line above the linked line, the diagram loses linkages.

For example, in the example at flowchart.fun, inserting a new line above the first will destroy the diagram.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#79

I have come to the conclusion there are two kinds of audience and two kinds of diagram, abs they almost exactly overlap 1. Engineering diagrams, explaining concepts to other engineers who are using the diagram as a jumping off point to deeper explorations 2. "Business" diagrams - the sort of thing we want to see in a Medium article or presentation. The style and correct placement matters far more than engineering. Th…

This kind of thing is exactly why we need to normalize complex examples.

Have the simple ones front and centre, but also go full pedal to the medal and show flesh out the really complex ones.

Recent and related shout-out: Neo4J has thankfully included some on their API documentation.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#80
post #47

Unfortunately my corporate firewall/IT-Policy blocks this page, possibly due to the *.fun domain. Any other way to try this out for those working in an office? ( I know I'm an outlier at this time)

setup a web-based proxy in the cloud - make sure its in front of a .com domain (that does not have the word "proxy" in it) and get your SSL certs right. Here's a popular package: https://mitmproxy.org/ You might have to add some basic auth layer to it so as not to make it open to the world. or just use your cellphone.

Are you seriously counseling someone to run mitmproxy in order to puch a hole out of their employer's network?
Post reply on HN