
ASCIIFlow Infinity - billpg
http://asciiflow.com/
======
m_eiman
There's also Monodraw, ASCII drawing with a native MacOS GUI and more advanced
tools.

[https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)

~~~
dmd
Monodraw is _incredible_ , and vastly more useful than ASCIIFlow just by dint
of the fact that objects _remain objects_ after drawn - you can drag them
around and the graph remains intact.

~~~
pveierland
ASCIIFlow does keep models of drawn boxes, lines, and arrows. If you use the
"resize/move boxes and lines" tool, you can adjust drawn objects.

~~~
dmd
Ah, so it does. Not especially well, but it does. My mistake!

~~~
bootywizard
Author here - it does but it doesn't, which is why it doesn't always work so
well. It never actually keeps track of the shapes in a seperate data model -
the text itself is the only data model. When you resize, it retraces out the
lines that need editing. I did this as the expected use case is for diagrams
in code, where diagrams may be copy pasted in and out of the tool and I'd lose
any underlying models that I was working with. For fun:
[https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2/blob/master/js-
lib/draw...](https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2/blob/master/js-
lib/draw/move.js)

~~~
foochick
Grateful user here. I've relied on ASCIIFlow for all the diagrams in my
Internet drafts since IETF 88. Truly an essential tool in my arsenal.

------
okket
See also previous discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=asciiflow.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=asciiflow.com)

Also, this looks like it is the repository for ASCIIFlow and you can run it
locally:

[https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2](https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2)

------
cryptonector
Reminds me of JavE ([http://jave.de/](http://jave.de/)).

EDIT: What would be extra awesome would be a mode where it saves SVG. And/or a
tool that renders SVG as ASCII art.

EDIT: Also, JavE does much more than asciiflow, as it even allows you to
create ASCII _movies_.

------
rbonvall
I like this. Unfortunately it's not as semantic as I expected:

    
    
                X
         +----+XX----------+
         |     XX          |
         |      XX         |
         |       +XXX------+
         |       |   XXXXX
         +-------+       XXX
    
         If I try to resize
         a rectangle that's
         crossed by a free-form
         curve, it stops being
         a rectangle.
    

(Now that I think, I could also use this as a feature).

~~~
ben174
This is explained by a comment from the author (bootywizard) above:

Author here - it does but it doesn't, which is why it doesn't always work so
well. It never actually keeps track of the shapes in a seperate data model -
the text itself is the only data model. When you resize, it retraces out the
lines that need editing. I did this as the expected use case is for diagrams
in code, where diagrams may be copy pasted in and out of the tool and I'd lose
any underlying models that I was working with. For fun:
[https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2/blob/master/js-
lib/draw...](https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2/blob/master/js-lib/draw..).

~~~
gowld
This could be fixed by being more expansive/creative with choice of glyphs, so
that two intersecting lines get represented by a glyph that uniquely
corresponds to the 2 glyphs that overlap at that position (possibly also
encoding z-depth stack in the glyph choice)

------
rqs
Cool! I can use it to make some ASCII arts for my console applications.

However, please change the icon of Freeform Drawing Tool. Because currently
that icon make it looks like a Curve Drawing Tool in the first glance.

~~~
rejschaap
There is also a bug when you press a key during freeform drawing on Firefox
Nightly. It doesn't properly set the active character. Works fine on Chrome
though.

------
TomNomNom
Very cool! It would be awesome if it had a mode that used the unicode box-
drawing characters too [0]. It can get a little tedious copy and pasting them
and drawing things manually.

\- [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-
drawing_character](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character)

------
nimbius
As a Linux sysadmin, this is incredible flowchart software and I really enjoy
using it. Is there a diagram software for console I could use thats just as
easy I wonder?

The downside is it has very limited sex appeal for *.managers. Microsoft Visio
has turned diagrams into blinding tapestries of overpriced clipart, fancy
arrows, and logos. Worst of all, its an enabler for the cardinal sin of
diagrams: overlapping lines.

~~~
Mandatum
Check out PlantUML - there's a nice demo here:
[https://www.planttext.com/](https://www.planttext.com/)

Plenty of editors support it, both console (vim/emacs) and GUI-based (VSCode,
Sublime).

------
prateek_mir
On similar lines, I very recently discovered the combination of emacs + Artist
Mode + ditaa for creating diagrams, and the experience has been pretty good so
far too.

~~~
wyuenho
Oh yeah, this combo is actually one of the better modes in Emac-land. Whenever
I see yet another ASCII art link posted here, I just gaggle cos Artist mode is
that good.

~~~
ams6110
Like many emacs things, there more than one. There's also picture-mode. I
haven't used either very much, but my sense is that artist-mode is more mouse-
oriented and possibly supports more sophisticated drawings but picture-mode
may work better in terminals.

------
kleff
Pretty cool, but the text tool really needs some figlet-like functionality
with fonts and outlines!

------
geonnave
Great tool. I used it to create a state machine diagram - one that I then
included in the inline documentation of my Elixir code.

~~~
rjbwork
Clever. I once had to diagram a state machine for a PR to an OSS program since
the code is a bit inscrutable if you don't understand the purpose. This would
have been quite useful in that regard.

------
indescions_2018
Great execution!

I understand the impetus to keep things simple. But PNG image export would be
a tremendous boon to me. Should be trivial as you are just drawing text to the
canvas, no?

~~~
taneq
As a workaround you can just take a screenshot (although that could get
cumbersome with large diagrams).

------
agumonkey
quick emacsen, let's augment artist-mode to match it (especially the topology
friendly resize)

------
taneq
Wow, that smart resize tool is awesome, and makes this a good tool for
roughing out dungeon maps. :)

------
arca_vorago
I used to use asciiflow for some of my network sketching, and it can be
enjoyable to play with. That said, I have been thinking about the subject of
network maps for quite some time now as a senior sysadmin, and I no longer use
it for a couple of reasons.

First, I don't like the idea of being tied to a webservice for my map drawing
tools. I would really like the source code so I can self-host. I looked around
the new updated asciiflow website and didn't see any links to source so
correct me if I'm wrong.

Second, and most importantly, as a senior sysadmin over the years I have seen
hundreds of network maps, the vast majority of them being in visio due to it
having market dominance, and there is a problem that neither visio or it's
competitors has addressed, and that's automated network mapping with
versioning so you can diff and walk back in time. It's the thing even the best
automappers still don't do right because they tend to get the topology wrong
(such as one of my favorite automappers like librenms's).

This is why one of the utilities I have been working on is a bash-script
cobbling together nwdiag
([http://blockdiag.com/en/nwdiag/index.html](http://blockdiag.com/en/nwdiag/index.html)),
a subset of the blockdiag, with nmap and (h/f)ping scanners as the generating
input and cronified daily versionable text output with checksums, with bonus
things like new kea-dhcp lease triggering rescan via the kea restful api.

I think the future of network maps needs to be both automated and text based
to enable admins and executives the ability to fully visualize the network at
any given state in time, with the ability to walk the cat back with confidence
in the accuracy of the map you are looking at(I would like to integrate gpg as
well).

It's not quite ready for release, (sitting in my github projects folder
waiting for push), but I lazily named it anmap for automated-network-mapper.

So right now how I use it personally is I have an emacs-org mode file that is
cronified to output daily latex pdf reports that calls the bash script and
generates the output map which is then listed inside the rest of the org-mode
systems report which does other stuff like give me go-no-go on system usage
via stuff like lynis, rkhunter, ckrootkit, and ossec.

tldr - Basicallly the network map industry is extremely ripe for competition
and all these web-based network mapping tools are still not addressing a core
needs usecase for sysadmins.

~~~
farresito
I haven't tried it, but could it be this one?
[https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2](https://github.com/lewish/asciiflow2)

~~~
arca_vorago
That looks like it to me, though for some reason I didn't expect it to be
java. Regardless, thanks so much for the link! Huge bonus that it's gplv3 for
me, I will def be playing with this. Did you find it from the website and I
just missed it or did you have to search for it?

~~~
farresito
A few weeks ago I was interested in this project, too, and looking around I
came across this link. The author's profile also points to the AsciiFlow
website, so I assumed that would be it. I think you might have misread the
language; it's actually written in javascript :-)

~~~
arca_vorago
I'm going to blame my phones autocorrect, but it was mostly because I hadn't
had coffee yet.

------
rwieruch
Awesome application! I used it in the past to draw ASCII diagrams for my blog
posts (e.g. [0]) as I was looking for an alternative way to display "images".
Still needs some tweaking for mobile usage, but on desktop it's just great
because of the removed loading times for images.

\- [0] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/learn-react-before-using-
redux/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/learn-react-before-using-redux/)

------
degenerate
I've never seen that "Can you help us?" Google donation tab before.

Is that new? It looks like Google requires you to register as a non-profit to
use it. Am I looking at the wrong thing?

[https://support.google.com/donations/answer/7570174?hl=en](https://support.google.com/donations/answer/7570174?hl=en)

------
wazoox
There's also my favorite, Asciio
[https://metacpan.org/pod/App::Asciio](https://metacpan.org/pod/App::Asciio)

It allows saving the object format for later modification or export as pure
ascii text, as needed. And it works on all platforms that support Perl (a
lot).

~~~
jakeogh
good stuff.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l9W84PhOyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l9W84PhOyI)

------
loudandskittish
Love seeing more tools for good old ASCII art, but it seems ANSI art has
become a forgotten relic of the past...

------
JasonFruit
This is great. I've made a few diagrams with it today, and they've been easy
to do and came out just right.

I do wish I could toggle the background and view the diagram on blank white;
having the grid visible makes some things look more obvious than without, and
that would be useful to know ahead of time.

------
symisc_devel
Another project we worked on using machine learning (decision tree) to
transform an input image or video frame into printable ASCII characters:

[https://art.pixlab.io](https://art.pixlab.io)

------
braywill
In Firefox, arrows that point to boxes have the head set to '^' regardless of
their actual direction.

So an arrow to a box might look like ----^

~~~
sigzero
I just tried it with Firefox (latest). I didn't have that issue. When I moved
the line the > became ^ until I dragged it back into place.

------
darkwinx
It is a great tool. I use it to create simple GUI mockup, then copy-paste it
to github/gitlab issue.

~~~
juliushuijnk
I'm working on a prototype that's basically made for what you're trying to do.
A text command based UX tool. You can create both text-renderings and image-
renderings: [https://medium.com/proof-of-concept/creating-a-true-ux-
tool-...](https://medium.com/proof-of-concept/creating-a-true-ux-
tool-2-speed-9e68d0b2740)

I wrote a number of articles on it, and soon will open up an online version of
the prototype. Love to get your feedback.

------
izabera
this is so cool, is there any plan to make it work in a terminal?

------
narendraj9
Emacs has a built-in mode for doing this - picture-mode

~~~
ungamed
Did you get this to work on a modern emacs ?

------
keehun
Wow! Works very well on my iPhone, too! Great work.

------
swayvil
sweet

------
tzahola
Why is there a separate tool for creating text? It would be better to just
click to place the cursor and start typing.

~~~
alanfalcon
Also this works on mobile.

