
Show HN: Scrawl - sgentle
https://demos.samgentle.com/scrawl/
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SerLava
This is excellent. I spend a lot of time doodling procedurally - coming up
with unexpected patterns by following strict rules as to how lines can be
drawn in relation to a previous line. This automates the tedious part of that
and makes it easier to be creative.

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relkor
I am a little lost, I am able to add things to the bar by clicking, and I can
change the node growth rules by selecting the menu of shapes on the side, but
what is the use case? What am supposed to be able to do with this project?
Even a one sentence modal would be greatly appreciated, or a help div, or
something.

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sgentle
I wouldn't say it has a use case per se, it's more of a toy. I hear you,
though - I've added an info link down the bottom right that leads to
[https://github.com/sgentle/scrawl](https://github.com/sgentle/scrawl), where
there is some more information.

~~~
iheartmemcache
I can think of a bunch, mostly all revolving around replacing Visio and
OmniGraffle. Exposing an API service shouldn't be too difficult considering
the fluent style you modeled your own internal API. Make that and/or allowing
people to upload their own stylesheets a premium feature. Having two panes
like this[1] where I can declaratively chart things out, and have you take
care of the styling and I'd be a paying customer. and/or having some
aesthetically pleasing UI right out of the box would make this my go-to tool.

Use cases - \--this could be a fantastic tool for diagramming components,
whether you want to Mindmap something to make concrete what only a concept in
your mind. \--Modelling out infrastructure (maybe dynamically querying
whatever status service you have to generate a dashboard ...again a premium
feature) \--Modelling out entities \--Integrate it with Jupyter (formerly
Python Notebook) as a premium feature. \--(This is admittedly a wanky feature
that someone in marketing would come up with, but if you want user adoption
what I'd do is leverage the existing 'standard env' and build around it) i.e.
Have it hook into Github or Slack and on a build failure (likely in your AWS
Docker instance!) ping the person who broke the build and have a bot that
announces in the startup's Slack-room to shame him/her along with some wanky
dependency graph (just diff the last known build and walk up the prototype
chain).

I'm speaking maybe 20% in jest, 80% in 'you can really cobble together a
product like that and tie Stripe into it'. Visio needs to die. I was working
on something similar myself (a little more limited in scope) but got
distracted.

Just a feature suggestion - localize the hot-keys for shapes into something
one can reach with solely their left hand, so as to free up their right hand
for mouse actions. Between use the keys 'asdfgwerv' as main menu items (e.g.
triangles, squares, etc), then associate each of those components with one of
those keys, which when pressed will open up a sub-menu (regular triangles,
isosceles, etc) accessible by the same keys.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/TBUycHc.png](https://i.imgur.com/TBUycHc.png)
Something like that, where onKeypressUp pane_2 renders the contents of pane_1.

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klunger
This is neat. I wish there was a way to zoom in/out of the canvas area, so I
could go deeper with my fractals.

~~~
sgentle
Good point, I've added mousewheel zooming now. I'd been putting off adding
zooming but it really does make it nicer. Thanks for the feedback!

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lindx
Sadly this is what I see when I visit your site:
[https://anonm.gr/up/d654.png](https://anonm.gr/up/d654.png)

I tried to solve the captcha several times, before giving up. This will happen
to all users that try to visit your site using Tor.

~~~
sgentle
Hm, how frustrating. I've seen that issue before on my own VPN and I think
it's something to do with the interaction between Cloudflare's security cookie
and my site, but it's tricky to reproduce. I'm trying it using the Tor Browser
now and it seems to be working.

If all else fails you can try
[https://sgentle.github.io/scrawl/](https://sgentle.github.io/scrawl/)

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biot
EDIT: (controls were unintuitive on tablet/mobile) It seems like you need to
select the shape then tap on the line you want to apply it to. One tap
previews the change, a second tap on the same line applies the change; tapping
elsewhere cancels applying it.

For those who want to read up on it:
[https://github.com/sgentle/scrawl/](https://github.com/sgentle/scrawl/)

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chm
The keyboard doesn't work for me on Debian/Iceweasel.

~~~
sgentle
Oops. I have no idea how I missed that. I even tested it on Firefox. Fixed
now, thanks.

