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Show HN: Mermaid ASCII Diagrams

123 points9 hoursmermaid-ascii.art
virtualritz4 hours ago

This obviously needs a direct pipe into Svgbob!

https://ivanceras.github.io/svgbob-editor/

quuxplusone6 hours ago

Some nits:

The "Example" buttons don't jump out at me; I found them but it took a while. Also consider labeling them with their point, e.g. "Example 3: Color"

If you change the input text to something well-formed, the graph seems to update immediately. But if you change it to something ill-formed, the graph doesn't update immediately — and then if you click "Generate" manually, it blanks the input box. Either this is a bug, or the "Generate" button doesn't do what I think it does (i.e. generate output). Again, adding a noun to the verb might help. Or just adding some usage information somewhere on the page.

For those like me who've never heard of "Mermaid," apparently it's like GraphViz's dot language but different. https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid I tried the flowchart example from Mermaid's own README, but it didn't come out right: looks like the shape characters [] and {} aren't handled.

lordswork2 hours ago

Counter-nit: I found the examples within a few seconds.

matt32102 hours ago

Same, I had no idea there were examples until I read this.

AlexanderGrooff6 hours ago

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the web UI can be improved (quite) a bit, most of my efforts went into the actual generation of the diagrams. I'll have a look at prettifying it.

jonahx5 hours ago

Nice work, I love ascii diagrams. Especially useful when you want a visual explanation that can be embedded directly in source code.

Small nit on layout: 90 degree joints should use "+" in the connecting lines, as they do in the boxes.

nunobrito5 hours ago

Hey, where are the mermaids?!?

But now seriously.. the diagrams are working really well for simple examples, thank you so much for sharing this tool. I have bookmarked your page, my documentation is based on text files and often have to build these kind of diagrams too.

The example buttons took me a while to be found, but are good for syntax explanation. Thank you for making this available.

AlexanderGrooff4 hours ago

Thanks for the kind words!

tiagoafpereira36 minutes ago
zczc51 minutes ago
nlake9063 hours ago

love it, will definitely be using it for sketching documentation in comments for SQL sprocs, etc.

One request: support for self-reference, i.e. "A --> A", "A --> A & B"

AlexanderGrooff3 hours ago

Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I'm also noticing that's not working as intended.

AlexanderGrooff54 minutes ago

Fixed in 0.5.0. Give it a try!

piedpiper996 hours ago

I supposed it's good for basic usage. I just tried a more complex graph and it didn't render well.

ewalk1536 hours ago

This would be great to build into project readme workflows.

kitd6 hours ago

You can already use Mermaid in GitHub markdown:

https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/wor...

mcraiha5 hours ago
edflsafoiewq5 hours ago

I don't like that it renders controls on top of the diagram.

airstrike4 hours ago

[flagged]

octopusRex6 hours ago

I'm disappointed. I was actually expecting lovely ascii art pictures of mermaids.

derfnugget5 hours ago

Same. This is more than a nit. It's pretty much a need.

kleiba5 hours ago
m4tthumphrey6 hours ago

[flagged]