Dot-to-ASCII

Dev tools

diagram converter

SHOW HN2019

152points
23comments
#278of 2,195 in 2019
Top 13%of 2019 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

4 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 3 critical, out of 13 comments about the project. Thread score 0.00.

Execution: 1 for, 3 againstDesign: 2 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful and neat, especially the CodeMirror editor

    From 3 comments
    • fair enough, 'bout what I was thinking. Anyway good job, it certainly maximises usefulness for the complexity. Especially good call on using the codemirror editor, I'd have not…
      masklinn on HN
    • This is pretty cool! I probably would have never discovered graph-easy if it weren't for this. One thing though, it doesn't handle errors that nicely, e.g. for input "a" it…
      joeraut on HN
    • This is super cool! Well done OP!
      matthewhartmans on HN
  • Shareable diagrams via URL hash added quickly

    From 2 comments
    • Done! This is the code change: https://github.com/ggerganov/dot-to-ascii/commit/1e5f818bbc3ad67443c1d78a699a4cdb1b1e6ed3
      ggerganov on HN
    • Nice work, thanks!
      Exuma on HN

Objections

  • Rendering bugs with ranks and clusters

    From 2 comments
    • There is some bugs i think: ``` digraph "CK-Build" { subgraph rank_0 { rank=0; "a"; } subgraph rank_1 { rank=1; "b" -> "a"; } } ``` On regular rendering, this does not render a…
      Kuinox on HN
    • something went wrong when I changed subgraph cluster 0 to: ``` subgraph cluster_0 { a0 -> a1 -> a2 -> a1; label = "process #1"; } ```
      fnord77 on HN
  • Poor error handling, e.g. outputs null for invalid input

    From 1 comment
    • This is pretty cool! I probably would have never discovered graph-easy if it weren't for this. One thing though, it doesn't handle errors that nicely, e.g. for input "a" it…
      joeraut on HN
  • Uses plain ASCII characters instead of box-drawing characters

    From 1 comment
    • I really would love this if it would use more characters (UTF-8?) to create more beautiful diagrams: Instead of this: ``` + - - - + ' HELLO ' + - - - + ``` Do this: ``` ┌───────┐…
      FreeHugs on HN

Requests

  • Use UTF-8 box-drawing characters

    From 1 comment
    • I really would love this if it would use more characters (UTF-8?) to create more beautiful diagrams: Instead of this: ``` + - - - + ' HELLO ' + - - - + ``` Do this: ``` ┌───────┐…
      FreeHugs on HN
  • Make diagrams shareable

    From 1 comment
    • This is quite awesome. Can you make them shareable?
      Exuma on HN

Questions

  • Can this be done on the command line with regular Graphviz?

    From 2 comments
    • Can you do this on the command line with regular graphviz?
      ape4 on HN
    • Not with graphviz but it calls to a Perl package called graph-easy which provides a command-line utility. So you could install and use that.
      masklinn on HN
  • Why PHP wrapper instead of Perl library directly?

    From 1 comment
    • Interesting, why a PHP wrapper to the graph-easy CLI rather than a perl cgi/fcgi/… to the graph-easy library? edit: sending the graph info via GET is a bit risky though, browsers…
      masklinn on HN

Alternatives named

  • Graph-easy (Perl)

    From 2 comments
    • Not with graphviz but it calls to a Perl package called graph-easy which provides a command-line utility. So you could install and use that.
      masklinn on HN
    • This is pretty cool! I probably would have never discovered graph-easy if it weren't for this. One thing though, it doesn't handle errors that nicely, e.g. for input "a" it…
      joeraut on HN
  • Monodraw

    From 1 comment
    • If you have a Mac then Monodraw is pretty good for editing ASCII diagrams in general: https://monodraw.helftone.com/
      mamp on HN
  • Sketchviz

    From 1 comment
    • Can't some reasonable person refresh our website so we would have more useful content like this? :-) also include Sketchviz https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21518152 don't…
      graphviz on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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