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Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

spidermonkey.dev

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Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#2
This is a cool example of how specializing a generic algorithm to a specific subspace can yield much better results. This is quite often the case in my experience, but we often don't bother utilizing properties that are specific to our problem space, and just apply the generic algorithm out of convenience (and because it is often good enough)

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#3
This is a concept I'm working around with Microdiagram (microdiagram.com) prototype.

i.e. having a general purpose diagram/graph layout is hellishly difficult, but most of the diagrams/charts follow much simpler rules, thus it's much easier to have N languages, each for 1 type of diagram, than 1 language for N types of diagrams.

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#5
post #3

This is a concept I'm working around with Microdiagram (microdiagram.com) prototype. i.e. having a general purpose diagram/graph layout is hellishly difficult, but most of the diagrams/charts follow much simpler rules, thus it's much easier to have N languages, each for 1 type of diagram, than 1 language for N types of diagrams.

Sounds intriguing. What is an example of a chart and its language that you have designed so far?

Re: Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?

#9
anyone working on this space easily gets a +1!

I have struggled with code to diagram tools for a while [mermaid and graphviz], and usually return to figjam when I need the readabilty and aesthetics.

graph-viz is MASSIVE and a binary. mermaid requires the browser's svg rendering system to work. I just need something that builds diagrams from description easily ...

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