Like PlantUML?
Except it has trouble rendering text on the CLI version when producing SVGs.
Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
21–30 of 110 posts
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#22Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#23I have an almost exhaustive list [1] of browser based text to diagram tools. Some specialised tools (like https://sequencediagram.org/ ) so much better at what they do than any generic ones like mermaid. [1] https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/
This list is so cool!
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#24IMO mermaid is awesome, but for two somewhat indirect reasons: - There’s an almost wysiwig editor for mermaid at https://www.mermaidchart.com/play . It’s very convenient and appropriately changes the layout as you draw arrows! - Notion supports inline mermaid charts in code blocks (with preview!) It’s awesome for putting some architecture diagrams in Eng docs.
Obsidian also supports inline mermaid charts in markdown code blocks. One of those features I don't see mentioned much.
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#25I don't love Mermaid and generally find it less well designed than something like Graphviz/dot. I generally find a lot of the syntax needlessly strict for something non-programmer humans are meant to interact with, but the big seller for me with Mermaid is that it works inline on GitHub.
I end up creating a lot of sequence diagrams and having them as editable mermaid is very convenient. I do wish GitHub giant mermaid navigation controls floating over the bottom right corner obscuring things.
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#26This is built into Obsidian, and I love it for making quick diagrams in my notes.
Mapping out database tables while I’m conceptualizing an idea is what I use it more most often. I also use sequence diagrams to map process flow or try e flow of information.
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#27I have an almost exhaustive list [1] of browser based text to diagram tools. Some specialised tools (like https://sequencediagram.org/ ) so much better at what they do than any generic ones like mermaid. [1] https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/
This is a great resource. Thank you for the effort. Do you know of something similar for charting/data-viz libraries?
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#28I'm slightly surprised excalidraw (https://excalidraw.com/) is not in the comments. I use it regularly to convey ideas to my devs and designers. Plus, it exports to json! Someone wrote a library to convert mermaid to excalidraw as well.
We're now experimenting with creating design questions to ask in interviews with excalidraw/mermaid
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#29I have an almost exhaustive list [1] of browser based text to diagram tools. Some specialised tools (like https://sequencediagram.org/ ) so much better at what they do than any generic ones like mermaid. [1] https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/
I like Mermaid fine, but nothing is perfect. I will look at your list. The tool I always wanted would let me paste in the SQL of my database schema and output a diagram of the tables and relationships. That's SQL and not Markdown or JSON or any other format. Note that DrawDB (www.drawdb.app) does this, although it does not yet handle views. But I have been happy with what it offers so far. Still, I would welcome sugg…
Check out dbdiagram.io though I don’t know if it handles views either, I never tried.
Re: Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text
#30I liked Mermaid but unfortunately LLMs don't understand it well, so I switched to Latex tikz which LLMs know pretty well. At least I know Gemini 2.5 Pro does a good job at tikz. 3.7 and o1 were meh.
deepseek r1 understands mermaid very well and can correct all the mistakes of Gemini and Claude