
Online Text to Diagram Tools - illuminated
https://smusamashah.github.io/text-to-diagram
======
julianeon
This could be life changing for me, very glad I found this.

But for people who want a use case: See that entry called svgbob? That’s
pretty incredible. If you need a logo for a minor project, just throw some
characters in a file and let it do its thing.

From the results there, it’ll generate something professional quality, and
because it’s an SVG, as a logo, it will be superior to any jpg or png file,
able to scale to any size without degradation.

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stared
An interesting collection, but it would really benefit for an image for each
tool. (Or even better, a code sample and image, side by side.)

Without a description, I have no idea, what is the input, outcome, are these
popular, are these in active development, are these open source, etc.

~~~
smusamashah
That was a little too much work TBH because the tools keep changing. I put a
minimal textual description which is way easier to maintain.

~~~
stared
Everything keeps changing. Ang given that, (at least for me) it gives little
advantage over a web search.

While more elaborate interactive lists (e.g.
[https://explorabl.es/](https://explorabl.es/) and
[https://p.migdal.pl/interactive-machine-learning-
list/](https://p.migdal.pl/interactive-machine-learning-list/)) might be more
time consuming, putting screenshots isn't.

~~~
smusamashah
The list is about tools from textual descriptions, so is this collection.
Having a textual description of syntax or ui makes some sense though.

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kitd
This came up in the Graphviz discussion yesterday:

[http://www.webgraphviz.com/](http://www.webgraphviz.com/)

~~~
bhubert
Another one that came up in the Graphviz discussion:
[https://edotor.net/](https://edotor.net/)

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endanke
I've been experimenting with many of them and PlantUML is the best one I've
used so far. It has a great feature set, and a lot of ways to define different
alignment and styles of the diagrams.

There's also some interesting projects on GitHub for generated PlantUML
diagrams, including this one:
[https://github.com/thibaultmarin/hpp2plantuml](https://github.com/thibaultmarin/hpp2plantuml)

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fatiherikli
This might be interesting for this post as well:
[https://fatiherikli.github.io/archetype/](https://fatiherikli.github.io/archetype/)

This is doing to vice-versa, it allows you to create a text-based diagrams.

~~~
smusamashah
Thanks for this. Didn't know about this. Added to list.

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m-p-3
I used MermaidJS for some diagram I wanted to add to some of my notes in
Markdown, and it was simple enough and Joplin (markdown-based note-taking
tool) added support not too long ago.

And you can also add Mermaid preview support to VSCode if that's something you
want.

[https://github.com/mjbvz/vscode-markdown-
mermaid](https://github.com/mjbvz/vscode-markdown-mermaid)

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bierner....](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bierner.markdown-
mermaid)

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627467
So, I never tried to make text diagrams and the thought of doing it (by hand,
I assume) haunts me:

How is it considered easy to build a simple table (or diagram) by having to
hit keyboard keys and navigate the cursors to seemingly random places to place
characters, while keeping the spacing, proportions, etc correct?

I don't like word processors but at least they recognize that if I drawing of
building a table I need a different interaction model.

Maybe someone in this thread could highlight use cases where making text-
diagrams (that may be later converted using these tools) is better than
picking a richer text editor.

~~~
l_t
Making plain-text diagrams isn't as hard as you might think, especially using
"overwrite mode" (that weird thing that happens when you fat-finger the insert
key!)

But many of these tools work by allowing you to express the _intent_ of the
diagram without having to draw it out. They're basically markup languages that
get "compiled" into diagrams. PlantUML is a good example:
[http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/uml/SyfFKj2rKt3CoKnELR1Io4Z...](http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/uml/SyfFKj2rKt3CoKnELR1Io4ZDoSa70000).
With these tools, you can make diagrams much, much faster (but usually with
less nuanced control over presentation)

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meitham
I wish the author added a brief description for each entry and how they
differ. I’m particularly interested to find out which is best for making
networking topography diagrams. This is still useful nevertheless.

~~~
smusamashah
Look for the word 'network' in the list

~~~
meitham
I see it now, thank you!

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xtiansimon
I'm toying with the idea of using DAG representation of data in my app, and
Diagram.Codes [1] did the trick to remind me how to _think_ in DAGs.

[1]: [https://www.diagram.codes/d/graph](https://www.diagram.codes/d/graph)

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bransonf
Glad to see nomnoml on this list. I really appreciate the simplicity and it’s
now my go-to for making diagrams.

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duncanfwalker
I'd love on with a basic live collaboration feature. In Covid I'm really
noticing the lack of a whiteboard and so long as you know what type of diagram
you're doing from the outset I'm found doing something in Mermaid/similar to
be much quicker than online whiteboards.

~~~
moritonal
Given Mermaid is now supported in Azure DevOps, it's not crazy to think GitHub
might support it in the future.

~~~
fabiomaia
Also GitLab

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vlasebian
Check out [https://plantuml.com/](https://plantuml.com/). It supports various
types of diagrams.

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fouc
I feel like this could've been a README.md in a github repo.. awesome list
style

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Bendy
This list is missing diagrams.net (draw.io).

~~~
smusamashah
It doesn't generate diagrams from textual descriptions

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joyceschan
looking for online erd tools (the mermaid.js one is close to being useful, but
not quite)

~~~
smusamashah
tagged with entity-relationship

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edgarvaldes
Great list!

