Looks nice. https://asciiflow.com/ is a web-based alternative that's been my go-to for a decade.
Monodraw
41–50 of 218 posts
Re: Monodraw
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Developer of Monodraw here. Thank you all for the kind words regarding the app. Unfortunately, my time is extremely limited which is why I haven’t had the chance to push more updates out. I’ve got a few highly requested features in the works but I cannot promise when they’ll see the light of day (I usually get to make progress during my holidays). I’m still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades and ens…
Thanks for your work in making an excellent tool; I, and many of my coworkers, use this. The price point is entirely fair and it’s a pleasure to use every time. But - above this - thank you also for prioritising personal life above development. It’s great as it is and we’ll be happy to see new features when you’re ready. I would be really proud if I were in your position. Cheers!
Thank you for the kind words!
Re: Monodraw
#43OMG this is one of my favorite tools paid for it all the way back when it went out. Have used it so many times just to write documentation for things like:
https://github.com/ivank/potygen/blob/main/packages/potygen/...
ASCII is just so versatile and allows you to put nice graphics in places where one does not expect, making things more easily understandable.
Re: Monodraw
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Developer of Monodraw here. Thank you all for the kind words regarding the app. Unfortunately, my time is extremely limited which is why I haven’t had the chance to push more updates out. I’ve got a few highly requested features in the works but I cannot promise when they’ll see the light of day (I usually get to make progress during my holidays). I’m still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades and ens…
Curious what some of the requested features are since it seems feature complete to me
The main requests have been for:
- Plaintext format (in progress) - Dark mode support for the main canvas (in progress) - Auto/Dynamic Layout - Table support - ANSI export
Re: Monodraw
#45monodraw has been one of my favorite diagramming tools, but never seemed to be popular with the folks i worked with.
Re: Monodraw
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve toyed with the idea of open sourcing the product. I reached the conclusion that it’s not the approach for two main reasons: - I believe in a strong, centralised product vision and execution - The code will be packaged up and sold by unscrupulous people who will not contribute back I’m a strong advocate of interoperability and open data formats. The Monodraw data format is not proprietary and I do have plans for…
> The code will be packaged up and sold by unscrupulous people who will not contribute back Choose a good license then
A license wouldn't stop the unscrupulous people, they'll keep making clones of it and ignoring the license.
This means I have to start chasing any clones, engage legally and try to take them down. It's just not worth the time - I would rather spend the time on improving Monodraw instead.
Re: Monodraw
#47I've used this in the past and enjoyed it. My one complaint, if I recall, is that you have to use its own built in file format to maintain all the cool features like anchors and resizable boxes and stuff. You can't just point at at an ASCII drawing in a markdown document and get all the functionality for free. I suspect if someone really wanted to they could crack that through clever algorithms and LLMs - and I've extensively used the latter to work on first drafts of ASCII diagrams to some success. But I've never found a good balance of maintainability (i.e. a box is a box and I can move it and have its connections follow it around) and portability (everything really is just pure text). If I'm wrong about recent versions of Monodraw or something else achieves this I'm all ears! I certainly had more success with Monodraw than artist mode in Emacs, at least.
Re: Monodraw
#48OMG this is one of my favorite tools paid for it all the way back when it went out. Have used it so many times just to write documentation for things like: https://github.com/ivank/potygen/blob/main/packages/potygen/... ASCII is just so versatile and allows you to put nice graphics in places where one does not expect, making things more easily understandable.
Those corners look like Unicode block chars.
Re: Monodraw
#49Awesome tool I purchased when I stumbled upon it.
I draw flowcharts for complex implementations in ASCII using Monodraw and embed them in source code.
Re: Monodraw
#50Funny. The front page (still) states: "We're a small studio that loves to make delightful apps. We just launched Monodraw." The blog says: Maintenance Mode With immediate effect, Monodraw is entering maintenance mode. This means that there will be no more updates in the future. While I'll be aiming to provide OS compatibility updates, if required, those are not guaranteed. Accordingly, the price has been reduced from…
Please not more app-store abandonware. I have a decent amount on both my phone and my MBP. Sad to see, I really liked Monodraw for creating ASCII illustrations for source code (e.g. buffer layouts etc). Of course, probably it'll be ok for a while, but then some App Store API or updated processor requirements will render it unusable like so many others (particularly on iOS). So now I've got several abandonware apps th…
> EDIT: Happy to see Milen's sibling comment about fixing breakage!! I realize you have to make a living -- is there a way to contribute for these new features (or is it a totally new app -- which is fine!).
I've considered the idea of letting other developers have access to the source code and help with the development. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure a way to make it fair - e.g., if someone starts contributing, do they start receiving a percentage of the proceeds? What's a fair percentage and what about multiple external contributors?
I could never come up with a workable model, so it's either fully open-source or proprietary. As I mentioned in another comment, I believe the way to go is an open data format which allows interoperability. This way there's no lock-in and competing apps (open or closed) can exist.
For what it's worth, the Monodraw data format is not secret, it's just compressed JSON. I haven't documented it because it's more of an implementation detail and I'd rather spend my very limited time on improving the product.
Hope that provides a bit more context.