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D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

d2-lang.com

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Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#41

Post by sophacles »

stragies wrote: post #24
Per_Bothner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to be missing that this is a preview, not a product (yet). And that: "When the language is more stable, we intend to open source D2. This will happen sometime in 2022."

Perhaps then "Preview/Beta online service" should be part of the Headline/title.

Perhaps reading the article is a useful way to get information? If the headline contained everything everyone would conceivably want to know, it would be the article. It's not like the headline was misleading: "a new $tool" is a common phrase for software in alpha and beta stages.

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#42

Post by ajstarks »

ducktective wrote: post #9

Is there a declarative language or framework for creating ad-hoc GUIs that consume structured data from stdin stream and spit-out a GUI? Like feedgnuplot [1] but not only restricted to graphs. [1] https://github.com/dkogan/feedgnuplot

Not a GUI, per se, but there is decksh [1] and dchart: [2]

[1] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/decksh-object-reference [2] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/dchart-charts-from-deck-mar...

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#43

Post by alixanderwang »

Hi all, creator of D2 here. I posted this on Reddit to get some feedback but was hoping to improve the docs and offer a playground environment before posting on HackerNews. Ah well. I wanted to clarify some things:

1. D2 will be open source and usable outside of Terrastruct. Terrastruct will remain the best interface to D2, with bidirectional updates from GUI, but we already have vscode and vim plugins ready for local editing. We're a small team and working on one thing at a time.

2. We're aware of PlantUML, Graphviz, Mermaid, of course. These are mature offerings, but I see plenty room for improvement that we intend to tackle with D2. https://d2-lang.com/tour/faq#how-does-this-compare-to-mermai...

Feel free to ask any questions!

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#44

Post by tomwojcik »

snowcorn wrote: post #35
kgm wrote: post #17

I am taken a little aback by the name. There is, of course, already the D programming language, which has even had a major version number of 2 for quite some time. It also brings to mind the JavaScript library d3, which, while not strictly for making diagrams, can easily lend itself to the purpose. Calling this thing "D2" seems potentially confusing.

We have: "D" the programming language [0] "D" the data language specification [1] "D" the programming language for DTrace [2] "D3" the javascript library [3] "D4" library/tool for Declarative Data-Driven Documents[4] "D4" implementation[5] of the data language specification[1] Overall, I think "D2" is objectively the best choice here. We have at least three "D"s, two "D4"s, and one "D3", so it makes sense to put it i…

As a gamer, after reading just "D2" my brain immediately assumed it's about Diablo 2 Resurrected.

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#45

Post by alixanderwang »

abeppu wrote: post #4

The last question in the FAQ makes it clear that this can only be used in the context of their account-based online tool. Their free offering literally says "3 diagrams". Above this, the FAQ tries to compare their tool to Mermaid, Graphviz, PlantUML which are all open source, locally runnable, etc. Their comparison totally skips the fact that, because D2 can only be used in their service, a broad number of use cases…

Those tools are mature 10-20+ year and we're just getting feedback for our little ol' alpha born ~yesterday. The limitations are temporary -- we are working on an offline, locally runnable experience (it's in the roadmap), but, alas, engineering bandwidth of a 6 person team.

edit: I've updated the docs to make this clear

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#47

Post by flashgordon »

alixanderwang wrote: post #43

Hi all, creator of D2 here. I posted this on Reddit to get some feedback but was hoping to improve the docs and offer a playground environment before posting on HackerNews. Ah well. I wanted to clarify some things: 1. D2 will be open source and usable outside of Terrastruct. Terrastruct will remain the best interface to D2, with bidirectional updates from GUI, but we already have vscode and vim plugins ready for loca…

By the way do you have a BNF grammar (or something more of a formal spec for this?). The cheat sheet does look good though.

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#49

Post by Ancapistani »

tomwojcik wrote: post #44
snowcorn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have: "D" the programming language [0] "D" the data language specification [1] "D" the programming language for DTrace [2] "D3" the javascript library [3] "D4" library/tool for Declarative Data-Driven Documents[4] "D4" implementation[5] of the data language specification[1] Overall, I think "D2" is objectively the best choice here. We have at least three "D"s, two "D4"s, and one "D3", so it makes sense to put it i…

As a gamer, after reading just "D2" my brain immediately assumed it's about Diablo 2 Resurrected.

I thought of the D-2 extract on Reserve in Escape from Tarkov.

Re: D2: A new declarative language to turn text into diagrams

#50

Post by sharkster711 »

clcaev wrote: post #32
stuart78 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the video the presenter mentions that they plan to open source the language when it reaches a greater stage of maturity.

A code dump does not make it an open source project. Sustainable OSS projects are developed publicly.

That's probably why they're doing a code dump
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