
Excalidraw – a whiteboard tool that lets you sketch hand-drawn diagrams - lipis
https://excalidraw.com/
======
capableweb
In the future, would be great if outsiders wouldn't try to influence what gets
to the frontpage of Hacker News. Here is the author of this project trying to
push people to upvote:
[https://twitter.com/Vjeux/status/1219340291603230721](https://twitter.com/Vjeux/status/1219340291603230721)

I'm pretty sure I have read somewhere on HN that people should not ask for
upvotes. Here is a example of just that happening.

If more people flag the submission, it'll eventually get removed from the
frontpage.

Edit: annoyingly, the author (vjeux) seems to have deleted the tweet by now
(not sure what the accomplishes?) and I took no archive of it. Life goes on

~~~
vjeux
Sorry about that! I don't really know what's the etiquette about this. I've
always asked people to upvote for the initial submission so that it has a
chance to get to the front-page. I'm happy to stop if that's against the
rules.

~~~
tptacek
It is very against the rules; it's too bad, because this is neat and probably
would have (in fact, probably did, given the ring detection stuff HN does
behind the scenes) done fine on its own. I appreciate the gracious response
and cancelled my flag on this post. But a comment pointing out vote
manipulation, even if it's well-intentioned, is on topic and deserves its
place on the thread.

~~~
lipis
Let's delete the Tweet and unflag it. it was an honest mistake

~~~
capableweb
I'm not sure where you're coming from, where soliciting for
votes/likes/whatever is NOT frowned upon. Only community I can come up with is
producthunt, where it used to be frowned upon but doesn't seem to be anymore.

Edit: also, missing to read the rules of community before participating
doesn't seem like a honest mistake. vjeux been around for a long time and I'm
sure knows how to navigate the different communities. Also since the whole "no
vote rings please" thing is mentioned in 3 or more places on
news.ycombinator.com.

~~~
lipis
The tool deserves some visibility!

~~~
capableweb
That's an opinion someone can hold.

In general, we let the HN community decide of what's worthy of visibility, and
it worked out great so far. Let's keep it that way! :)

------
vjeux
I wrote a blog post with my thoughts on the project here if you’re interested:
[https://blog.vjeux.com/2020/uncategorized/reflections-on-
exc...](https://blog.vjeux.com/2020/uncategorized/reflections-on-
excalidraw.html)

------
lipis
You can also share your diagrams via links:
[https://excalidraw.com/?id=6264616665481216](https://excalidraw.com/?id=6264616665481216)

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jordic
I have been following it since a week and is awesome to see how it evolves..
PR after PR it's getting better. Yesterday used it to just wireframe a small
feature. Awesome project!

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ako
Using hand-drawn sketch diagrams is useful, as it suggests it's a draft, not a
finished diagram.

However, you can do all of this and more with powerpoint, it's my default
sketching tool at the moment. More info: [https://blog-
insider.office.com/2019/07/03/sketchy-shapes-fo...](https://blog-
insider.office.com/2019/07/03/sketchy-shapes-for-word-powerpoint-and-excel/)

------
amflare
What's the deal with lines that are composed of two lines with a space in the
middle? This seems a very odd choice for something "hand drawn"

Eg:
[https://excalidraw.com/?id=5650452045627392](https://excalidraw.com/?id=5650452045627392)

~~~
shihn
It's an artifact of how Rough.js renders sketchy lines. It does that by
creating some random offsets. For some random values, it may create this
effect for long lines, which is not ideal. This is less pronounced in shorter
lines. The latest release has tried to reduce this effect, but there is a
small probability that it may still happen:
[https://roughjs.com/posts/release-4.0/](https://roughjs.com/posts/release-4.0/)

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bmuzakparov
I made my first open source contribution on this project and watched how it
evolved day by day. Absolutely love it!

Here is the repo:
[https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw](https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw)

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shaneos
It was amazing to see the rapid progress on Excalidraw, all fueled by open
source contributions but organized by Christopher. So cool to see what
enthusiastic devs can hack together in short order

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awave
Found it pretty useful for note taking in classes. Awesome tool

