Generate Flowcharts from Text • Hacker News Board

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#91

Post by yubrshen » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #75

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #67

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.

PlantUML provides such extra "perusation" to the layout. It works often.

But PlantUML's documentation is too scattered that it's hard to know how much it supports.

Overall, to me, PlantUML is one of the more promising trade-off for userability and sophistication.

I wonder if we could pool our resource together to help one reach to more userability.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#92

Post by plainoldcheese » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

you can do a similar thing with PIC and groff, though thats not always as convenient as having it right inside your markdown document.

you can even define more specific placement if you need to.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#93

Post by plainoldcheese » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #67

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…

agreed it would be nice if the markdown just generated a standard svg that you could then edit, or even just an html canvas where you can drag them around a bit more and add some color before exporting as an image

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#94

Post by yubrshen » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

Veuxdo wrote: post #37

smusamashah wrote: post #30

A 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.

Missing Ilograph: https://app.ilograph.com/ It's heavier-duty compared to most of the others you have listed, but should appeal to engineers who want something more robust.

It's much more sophisticated! It might be very powerful to have some wordsmith support in the authoring of the text, for example, in the org-mode of emacs, especially, the collapse (folding) of sub-trees.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#95

Post by zacharycohn » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #86

Yup, I love it. Can you do a > relationship? Two boxes flowing into one.

Figured it out! That was not super intuitive, but I've got it now.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#96

Post by yubrshen » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #67

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…

Have you tried PlantUML? It provides means of adjusting the layout. I use it often, most of the time the adjustment is good enough for engineering communication within minutes of adjustment. It could be better if there is more cohesive documentation of its support for the adjustment. I had to search on Google many times to figure out how to add the adjustment. The adjustment consists of directives of placement and direction of links, the length of links, grouping of notes, etc. I feel that it's very promising with more popular support.

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#97

Post by boksiora » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

Really cool!! Can you post it on GitHub ? I can use it while making documentation

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#98

Post by miguelmota » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

Incredibly intuitive and simple. Bookmarked!

Re: Generate Flowcharts from Text

#99

Post by jacobmischka » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

plainoldcheese wrote: post #93

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #67

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…

agreed it would be nice if the markdown just generated a standard svg that you could then edit, or even just an html canvas where you can drag them around a bit more and add some color before exporting as an image