I use Mermaid (https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/). The killer feature for me - you can write Mermaid scripts in your code comments and there's a plugin available for VS Code that will render it. It's awesome!
Generate Flowcharts from Text
81–90 of 135 posts
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#82I 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 agree. I looked at migrating our technical documentation out of MS Office documents into some diffable format and it were the diagrams that killed the initiative.
Tables are a pain, but most technical docs do not require rowspan and other things that are impossible to maintain in Markdown/reST/Asciidoc.
Diagrams are just a shitshow. PlantUML is the biggest player, and it tries to do the right thing by separating semantics and presentation, but kinda fails when your diagram grows too large.
I wish there was some tool that you could feed three separate human-readable inputs:
- styles, which let you define what your elements look like - semantics, which let you describe your elements and relationships - layout, which lets you manually rearrange the elements on your diagram (and is generated by a WYSIWYG tool)
Pikchr generates nice diagrams, but it's an all-in-one dialect. At least when I am reading well-written PlantUML I can understand the meaning of the diagram without seeing the rendered image.
The tool in the OP is nice, but it doesn't let you describe the layout at all.
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#83I 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 agree. I looked at migrating our technical documentation out of MS Office documents into some diffable format and it were the diagrams that killed the initiative. Tables are a pain, but most technical docs do not require rowspan and other things that are impossible to maintain in Markdown/reST/Asciidoc. Diagrams are just a shitshow. PlantUML is the biggest player, and it tries to do the right thing by separating se…
Ilograph fulfills 2 out of 3: diagrams are broken up into a model (resources) and perspectives (their relations). The layout is always automatic, though. As a plus, though, this allows them to be interactive and dynamic.
Disclosure: I'm the dev
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#84A list I compiled of 40+ similar text to diagram tools. https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/ Input in this one is very simple and cool.
One more to add: https://diagrams.mingrammer.com/
This needs to be installed and coded with a programming language. This list isn't about drawing with programming languages.
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#85I use Mermaid ( https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/ ). The killer feature for me - you can write Mermaid scripts in your code comments and there's a plugin available for VS Code that will render it. It's awesome!
And if you're using Sphinx to document, you can also just inline the diagrams in your .rst docs: https://github.com/mgaitan/sphinxcontrib-mermaid
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#86Yup, I love it.
Can you do a > relationship? Two boxes flowing into one.
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#87I 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…
diagrams.net (formerly draw.io) have an xml format that seems fairly open and they can also read/write a bunch of other formats (see here https://www.diagrams.net/blog/import-formats ) so something that gives you their xml format as a starting point might make sense.
discussion of format: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59416025/format-of-draw-...
Looks like they have an api too: https://jgraph.github.io/mxgraph/docs/js-api/files/index-txt...
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mine is profile name BTW mine is only a list and I won't mind any feedback here in comments.
One main idea that would make your list 3x better: add a code snippet from each one.
This is a really good idea, thanks. Snippet won't be enough to cover the usages though. Most of these tools use varying syntax for different diagrams.
Anyone looking for a specific need can go through the links to find out which one is better.
Go through some of them. It's hard to summarize a tools function in a single snippet. Same goes for screenshots. How would you do that?
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
One main idea that would make your list 3x better: add a code snippet from each one.
This is a really good idea, thanks. Snippet won't be enough to cover the usages though. Most of these tools use varying syntax for different diagrams. Anyone looking for a specific need can go through the links to find out which one is better. Go through some of them. It's hard to summarize a tools function in a single snippet. Same goes for screenshots. How would you do that?
> Anyone looking for a specific need can go through the links to find out which one is better.
98% of people don't have time for that. If a snippet or tiny screenshot can't reveal some of the essence of the language it's probably not very good.
Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text
#90Just today I was browsing around for a while for something like this.
But I just can't stand using a website for it, defeats half the purpose of it. I want to be able to commit it to version control and regenerate it on the fly if needed.
In the end I settled with latex+tikz. And was promptly reminded of how clunky it can be, an unnecessary time-sink for a quick sketch (but cool if you need something polished).