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I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

blog.lysk.tech

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Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#111

Post by ajkjk »

I want to love Excalidraw but it can be really frustratingly mediocre a lot of the time. For example, I'm constantly retrying to rescale something and then an arrow repositions or resizes itself, which reveals some kind of mistake in the underlying data model. Or undo/redo just doesn't work correctly. Or you're draw an arrow and try as you might it refuses to not attach itself to some other element. And all sorts of things that should be customizable are not (like defaulting to the non-rough style, or resizing arrows separately from line thicknesses). And there is a basically-complete pull request for a math mode (https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/pull/6037) which has been in limbo for years. Probably there are other things I'm forgetting.

Anyway, it's kind of annoying to use for reasons like these. Just thought I would mention it since all the comments here seem positive.

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#112

Post by janalsncm »

Small related problem I am having, wondering if there’s an existing solution for it:

I draw a lot of software diagrams on Mac. Lots of rectangles, arrows, and free text. I’m wondering if there’s anything that clean up my freehand boxes and potentially even text into something a little nicer? I want the boxes to snap to a nicer rectangle, the arrows to look cleaner, and the text to be more legible.

I could send the whole thing into an LLM and maybe that would work, but I also fundamentally feel like that’s overkill and less reliable.

I tried Freeform which apparently has that functionality on iPad, but wouldn’t you know the one thing you cannot do with Freeform on a Mac? Draw free form.

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#113

Post by jcul »

1a527dd5 wrote: post #49

Huge fan of https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid , not the prettiest things but enough to scratch the itch.

You know you can just paste mermaid into excalidraw?

It has a mermaid WYSIWYG editor and once the diagram is inserted you can edit it, move objects, add text just like you had drawn it directly in excalidraw.

I usually enter mermaid and then move things around to my liking rather than drawing from scratch.

You can also paste csv in, it's been a while since I've done it but I think it even generates a chart.

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#114

Post by agnishom »

mlysk wrote: post #51
agnishom wrote: post #44

I want to write a blog whose posts will be all about the technical details of how the blog works.

Author here: Haha - yeah that is kind of meta - i know. Other content will be more about the acutual problems i solve. Check out https://blog.lysk.tech/sqlite-on-git-prologue ;-)

That's an interesting article. I was being snarky, but I still think your article about Excalidraw images is still interesting.

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#115

Post by vismit2000 »

janalsncm wrote: post #112

Small related problem I am having, wondering if there’s an existing solution for it: I draw a lot of software diagrams on Mac. Lots of rectangles, arrows, and free text. I’m wondering if there’s anything that clean up my freehand boxes and potentially even text into something a little nicer? I want the boxes to snap to a nicer rectangle, the arrows to look cleaner, and the text to be more legible. I could send the wh…

https://skemio.com/

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#116

Post by therealdrag0 »

1a527dd5 wrote: post #49

Huge fan of https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid , not the prettiest things but enough to scratch the itch.

Mermaid is awesome, since it has broad support, can be committed to repos, and can be created and edited very easily by LLMs.

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#117

Post by janalsncm »

vismit2000 wrote: post #115
janalsncm wrote: post #112

Small related problem I am having, wondering if there’s an existing solution for it: I draw a lot of software diagrams on Mac. Lots of rectangles, arrows, and free text. I’m wondering if there’s anything that clean up my freehand boxes and potentially even text into something a little nicer? I want the boxes to snap to a nicer rectangle, the arrows to look cleaner, and the text to be more legible. I could send the wh…

https://skemio.com/

Doesn’t seem to have free-form available either.

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#118

Post by lnenad »

beAbU wrote: post #109
lnenad wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did I shit on excalidraw? I don't like how it looks, it's a personal preference. I don't think saying that equates to shitting on it.

1) You literally call Excalidraw a "wonky looking tool". 2) You claim you don't understand why people use it. 3) You claim your vibecoded substitute is more "normal" implying Excalidraw is abnormal.

Having a negative opinion on something and expressing it is shitting on something?

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#119

Post by freedomben »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #104
freedomben wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love excalidraw, but I have to agree. It also looks very unprofessional so if you ever have to write customer-facing diagrams, you have tool fragmentation. I just stick to draw.io now (aka diagrams.net)

Why does it cause tool fragmentation? You can change the font to a normal sans-serif font or to a monospaced font. Personally I like the default font. It looks weird to have my crappy doodles next to a normal computer font. The default one is very legible but has a style (and ligatures) that make it feel not too neat

Interesting, I'll have to check that out. Do you know if that a new feature (in the last few years)?

Re: I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

#120

Post by devin202 »

janalsncm wrote: post #117
vismit2000 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://skemio.com/

Doesn’t seem to have free-form available either.

Try Sketch to Visual, you can draw whatever you want and then click on generate. You will option of image or drawio based
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