
Show HN: Monodraw, an ASCII Art Editor for Mac - milen
http://monodraw.com
======
ben174
> Monodraw does not use activation or any other form of DRM. We have complete
> trust in our customers.

Thank you.

~~~
milen
I'm glad to see other people appreciate it :)

It was a very simple decision for me - putting any kind of activation etc
would just annoy the real customers. Whoever wants to pirate the app will do
so regardless of any other protection mechanisms.

(Monodraw developer)

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ajford
Any chance of a Linux/Windows port in the future? I saw this the last time it
hit HN, and have hoped for something like this for other OSes.

~~~
milen
Monodraw is written in Obj-C against the AppKit framework and we always strive
to create the best native experience.

This means the app is not portable as it is right now. But with the recent
announcement from Microsoft about their support for Obj-C, this might be
something that could happen in the future (MS does not yet support AppKit).

(Monodraw developer)

~~~
jdboyd
Might the GNUstep AppKit work for you?

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techdragon
Serious question: Does it work for anyone ?

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mminer
I've been using Monodraw for several months and really enjoy it. An
indispensable feature I don't see mentioned on the landing page is the ability
to embed an image in the canvas so that you can "trace" over it. It makes
converting an image to ASCII by hand much easier.

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tigeba
Been using the beta for a couple of months and I love the export options w/
various code comment flavors. It makes it much easier to drop in some no-so-
subtle hints. For example:

[https://github.com/bigbang/HelloAndroid/blob/master/app/src/...](https://github.com/bigbang/HelloAndroid/blob/master/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml#L5)

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tonteldoos
This seems really nice (and will work well with my wiki-ing everything
lately). However, as another poster pointed out, A$65 is somewhat steep for
something that won't see daily use. How does this compare with asciiflow
([http://asciiflow.com/](http://asciiflow.com/)) featurewise?

~~~
fredsted
The site you linked has a lot less features and a more cumbersome UI.

~~~
tonteldoos
Thank you! I hadn't yet had time to actually go and compare them. I'll have a
look at monodraw as soon as I have some cash available (my car is sucking me
dry...).

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sctb
Recent discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9138039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9138039),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8445087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8445087)

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chrisBob
> I can move myself to the Applications folder if you'd like.

That is a friendly feature that I haven't seen before. Do other programs do
this?

~~~
weslly
I've seen quite a lot of apps with this feature, they are probably using this:
[https://github.com/potionfactory/LetsMove](https://github.com/potionfactory/LetsMove)

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artursapek
Wow, I love this. I can't believe I never wished for something like this.

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jafingi
Been beta-testing this, and it's really really great! Excellent for small
diagrams in code comments.

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empressplay
Looks awesome! I guess my only concern is $65 AUD seems a bit high? Also, is
there a specific reason why it needs 10.9+?

~~~
milen
Hi there, Monodraw developer here.

Regarding pricing: I wish we could price it much lower but the reality is that
this tool is extremely niche. We've also put a _huge_ amount of work into it
and I hope it shows in the amount of polish (although there are many more
things we would like to improve and add but we had to call v1 at some point).
If we ever stand a chance to continue making the best software we can, we have
to price it in such a way that will allow us to do that. Note that we might
still fail and not achieve a sustainable level but if we priced it at, say,
$30 or $20 then we would definitely not be able to continue making the apps we
want.

Regarding 10.9+ requirement: we do depend on the improvements in AppKit in
10.9 regarding layer-backed views and hence the requirement.

Hope that clarifies both issues.

~~~
wmwragg
I understand the reasoning, but I was going to purchase it, then saw the
price, £39.99. I'd probably have bought it at £20, but for an app I'm not
going to use very often £40 is too much for me.

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MarkL4
I am really excited about this. I'm curious if I can write a novel in this
thing (or copypasta into something else), while mixing in visual cues (shapes,
drawings), so I can scan a huge text file (hundreds of thousands of words)
very quickly and always know exactly where I am.

~~~
milen
Hi there, Monodraw developer here.

I think it should be entirely possible. Different parts of your novel can just
be different shapes and you can arrange them on the infinite canvas as you
wish.

In addition, Monodraw now supports embedding of pictures on the canvas, so you
should be able to have additional visual cues.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any specific use cases in mind - always
happy to hear more from our users.

Thanks!

~~~
MarkL4
Another quick thought. Again, this program is already polished and excellent--
I think "export" should be as simple as hitting ctrl/command-C with something
selected and then pasting into a text file. This would be for quick little
drawings without breaking flow in another file. Right now it seems like you
have to export, choose a file name and location, open the new file, etc., etc.

And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but
it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even
autosave after every change. Layers, etc., would be lost, but I'd feel safer
than leaving data in your "proprietary" format (which actually might be quite
accessible) if I investigated it.

~~~
milen
> Another quick thought. Again, this program is already polished and excellent
> --I think "export" should be as simple as hitting ctrl/command-C with
> something selected and then pasting into a text file. [snip

That's exactly how it works! Select any number of shapes, hit Cmd-C and it
will copy them to the clipboard. You can even set a preference to include a
comment tag when copying to the clipboard.

> And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but
> it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even
> autosave after every change.

As a standard OS X document app, it autosaves are regular intervals that are
determined by the OS (in particular, every time you leave the app, as well).

~~~
MarkL4
>> That's exactly how it works!

Ah, have to be in select mode. Not intuitive--I really did play around and
give up, and I'm not stupid. ;-)

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chrisra
I can see this being used for command line UIs, and maybe it would be nice for
source control for some reason. Other than that, I struggle to see its
usefulness, and I'm a little surprised at all of the positive feedback.

The website looks beautiful! I bet it has been fun to develop.

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robohamburger
Awesome work! I have been working on a roguelike and a tool like this will be
great for mocking up dungeons and testing out different ascii characters for
representing things :)

Before I was using vim for this but this seems much nicer. I like the ability
to set a 9 grid up on rects.

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PythonicAlpha
I really would love having such a thing for Linux.

~~~
jeffbarr
Ditaa ([http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/](http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/)) does
drawings in a similar style, and is open source.

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ianseyler
Damn! I missed the Beta discount :( I've found this app useful for TCP/IP
diagrams and will be purchasing it shortly.

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zebas
The product is awesome! Just out of curiosity, what kind of TCP/IP diagrams do
you draw with it?

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userbinator
I'm guessing it's the ones found in RFCs, like this:

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt)

~~~
zebas
Awesome! Great examples on how to represent stuff in plain text. Thanks for
the link!

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monkeycantype
I've been wishing for something like this to help me draw diffable diagrams in
source code comments

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MyNameIsMK
This is really awesome. So much quality. Upvoting.

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mikecsh
Beautiful landing page!

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drt
congrats on launching this!

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entelechy0
Dude this thing is super cool! I can see myself using this a lot! Thanks!!

