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Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

monodraw.helftone.com

11–20 of 109 posts

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#12
post #9

This looks really cool. Well done! And no electron. Will definitely try it out

I get the hate that Electron gets for it's weight and overhead, but this is a perfect example of why Electron has value. This app has no dependency on native OS for anything beyond writing data. It doesn't need to compile heavy code bases, it doesn't need fast GPU or other access. It could have very well been an electron app, and it would have the benefit of being widely available on many platforms. I'd love to be ab…

I like seeing devs embrace native frameworks. Electron apps just do UI so differently that its just a pain to use. For example dragging a file tab out of vs code doesnt create a new window like every other editor.

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#13
post #10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the hate that Electron gets for it's weight and overhead, but this is a perfect example of why Electron has value. This app has no dependency on native OS for anything beyond writing data. It doesn't need to compile heavy code bases, it doesn't need fast GPU or other access. It could have very well been an electron app, and it would have the benefit of being widely available on many platforms. I'd love to be ab…

And think about how much more work it was. And how much more work it'll take to maintain and update. It's an interesting choice to do native. That said, very impressive work.

> And think about how much more work it was. And how much more work it'll take to maintain and update.

This isn't really true when supporting a single platform, assuming the author is fluent in AppKit etc.

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#14
post #9

This looks really cool. Well done! And no electron. Will definitely try it out

I get the hate that Electron gets for it's weight and overhead, but this is a perfect example of why Electron has value. This app has no dependency on native OS for anything beyond writing data. It doesn't need to compile heavy code bases, it doesn't need fast GPU or other access. It could have very well been an electron app, and it would have the benefit of being widely available on many platforms. I'd love to be ab…

It would not be possible to do this in electron.

To have the same great native feeling UI you’d need to use AppKit - not HTML.

Don’t get me started at the usual shortcuts and general platform behavior most electron apps get wrong.

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#15
post #9

This looks really cool. Well done! And no electron. Will definitely try it out

I get the hate that Electron gets for it's weight and overhead, but this is a perfect example of why Electron has value. This app has no dependency on native OS for anything beyond writing data. It doesn't need to compile heavy code bases, it doesn't need fast GPU or other access. It could have very well been an electron app, and it would have the benefit of being widely available on many platforms. I'd love to be ab…

Given the rapid development and maturity of virtualization, container, sandboxing, and emulation technology: to me it seems rather silly that it's not yet trivial to run macos and windows apps (and anything else one would want) transparently, side by side on the same machine. I'm not normally a microsoft fan, but their direction with WSL2/WSLg/WSA feels very interesting...

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#16
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the hate that Electron gets for it's weight and overhead, but this is a perfect example of why Electron has value. This app has no dependency on native OS for anything beyond writing data. It doesn't need to compile heavy code bases, it doesn't need fast GPU or other access. It could have very well been an electron app, and it would have the benefit of being widely available on many platforms. I'd love to be ab…

I like seeing devs embrace native frameworks. Electron apps just do UI so differently that its just a pain to use. For example dragging a file tab out of vs code doesnt create a new window like every other editor.

Just because it's not implemented yet doesn't mean it can't be implemented. Electron can do anything a native app can because it is a native app itself.

Anyway, you can do it without dragging which is actually even better. Just do Ctrl+K, O or on a Mac Cmd+K, O.

You can track when this feature is implemented here - https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/8171

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like seeing devs embrace native frameworks. Electron apps just do UI so differently that its just a pain to use. For example dragging a file tab out of vs code doesnt create a new window like every other editor.

Just because it's not implemented yet doesn't mean it can't be implemented. Electron can do anything a native app can because it is a native app itself. Anyway, you can do it without dragging which is actually even better. Just do Ctrl+K, O or on a Mac Cmd+K, O. You can track when this feature is implemented here - https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/8171

"you can do this thing in a completely different way than the native OS trains you to expect to do it, actually this is even better!"

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#19
post #4

What's the purpose of being able to embed an image in the sheet? Is it intended to be an aid to `tracing' an image when creating ASCII art, or does it have some other purpose?

I’ve used images scattered around the art board for reference. I like to copy brandur’s diagrams a lot, so I’ll usually have a couple of his on my board to reference.

Re: Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's not implemented yet doesn't mean it can't be implemented. Electron can do anything a native app can because it is a native app itself. Anyway, you can do it without dragging which is actually even better. Just do Ctrl+K, O or on a Mac Cmd+K, O. You can track when this feature is implemented here - https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/8171

"you can do this thing in a completely different way than the native OS trains you to expect to do it, actually this is even better!"

Pfffft. Yeah, imagine using the mouse more than the keyboard for a coding tool though?
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