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Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

penrose.cs.cmu.edu

41–50 of 124 posts

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#41
post #35

This is the type of thing I want to use AI for. Beautiful tool, but this looks daunting.

I've used ChatGPT to generate chart wireframes in Mermaid. Basically 'create a mermaid chart for the whole year'. Not exactly the same as data viz, but it worked for my use case, and cut out a heap of stuffing around and googling.

Yeap there is ChatGPT for this.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#43
post #5

Penrose looks great. Beautiful diagrams and readable code. What are some other text-driven diagramming languages / tools? I know of: https://mermaid.js.org/ https://graphviz.org/ https://flowchart.fun/

MetaPost. Shameless plug for my own introduction page: http://www.learnmetapost.com

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#44
post #35

This is the type of thing I want to use AI for. Beautiful tool, but this looks daunting.

I've used ChatGPT to generate chart wireframes in Mermaid. Basically 'create a mermaid chart for the whole year'. Not exactly the same as data viz, but it worked for my use case, and cut out a heap of stuffing around and googling.

It would be interesting to see someone like Wes Bos build an LLM from end to his graph packages.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#45

I have always found "diagrams as code" tools to be limiting. There will be that scenario where the generated diagram is not what you expected. The flexibility you get by using code is outweighed by these limiting scenarios. I switched to Mermaid.js but ended up switching back to normal diagramming tools because of these limitations.

I also find them limiting if I want to diagram something from my brain. However I found them splendid for drawing logs, the internal state of my software, or other data. Sometimes it's great to just printf() stuff in a format that can be drawn.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#47
I looked at a random example [1], and this needs heavy rework if it needs to work as an example. I'm scared to look at other examples.

- The second half of the 900 line style file is commented out code. Ugh. Should I be learning from examples or reviewing code when I read this?

- The end if the style file define/replaces coordinates which are not defined in the substance file. Why? Isn't it the point that a substance file has all the data? All coordinates and whatnot?

Overall, it does look cool. I like the idea of distinct substance/style/domain files. I probably won't give it a spin until it looks rock solid from a distance.

[1]: https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/try/?examples=walk-on-spheres/Sig...

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#48
post #5

Penrose looks great. Beautiful diagrams and readable code. What are some other text-driven diagramming languages / tools? I know of: https://mermaid.js.org/ https://graphviz.org/ https://flowchart.fun/

Mermaid has been nice to use. It's very much in a beta phase still, with some odd quirks and missing documentation. I'm excited to see where it will be in a year's time.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#49

I have always found "diagrams as code" tools to be limiting. There will be that scenario where the generated diagram is not what you expected. The flexibility you get by using code is outweighed by these limiting scenarios. I switched to Mermaid.js but ended up switching back to normal diagramming tools because of these limitations.

Our team uses diagrams-as-code (plantUML) to document processes, interactions, and state machines. Because our use case is functional, they don't have to look good - just good enough and understandable.

Some reasons on why we still use them: (1) They're source-control friendly. And (2) in some cases, we could generate them directly from code. We deal with a lot of state machines on embedded devices, and whenever management asks for "documentation", we run a transformer script that consumes the source code and spits out state diagrams that would placate them.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#50

I have always found "diagrams as code" tools to be limiting. There will be that scenario where the generated diagram is not what you expected. The flexibility you get by using code is outweighed by these limiting scenarios. I switched to Mermaid.js but ended up switching back to normal diagramming tools because of these limitations.

I think the point of those tools is to abandon the idea that one needs full say over every aspect of a diagram. Or even that all diagrams must be done in one tool - the most flexible one. Having more version-controlled documentation next to code is only a plus to me.
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