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Show HN: Mermaid ASCII Diagrams

187 points by AlexanderGrooff - 33 comments
quuxplusone [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Some nits:

The "Example" buttons don't jump out at me; I found them but it took a while. Also consider labeling them with their point, e.g. "Example 3: Color"

If you change the input text to something well-formed, the graph seems to update immediately. But if you change it to something ill-formed, the graph doesn't update immediately — and then if you click "Generate" manually, it blanks the input box. Either this is a bug, or the "Generate" button doesn't do what I think it does (i.e. generate output). Again, adding a noun to the verb might help. Or just adding some usage information somewhere on the page.

For those like me who've never heard of "Mermaid," apparently it's like GraphViz's dot language but different. https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid I tried the flowchart example from Mermaid's own README, but it didn't come out right: looks like the shape characters [] and {} aren't handled.

lordswork [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Counter-nit: I found the examples within a few seconds.
brink [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Counter-counter-nit: I did not.
matt3210 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Same, I had no idea there were examples until I read this.
AlexanderGrooff [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the web UI can be improved (quite) a bit, most of my efforts went into the actual generation of the diagrams. I'll have a look at prettifying it.
virtualritz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This obviously needs a direct pipe into Svgbob!

https://ivanceras.github.io/svgbob-editor/

pkaye [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Needs to have a '+' and the elbows and T intersections.
nunobrito [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Hey, where are the mermaids?!?

But now seriously.. the diagrams are working really well for simple examples, thank you so much for sharing this tool. I have bookmarked your page, my documentation is based on text files and often have to build these kind of diagrams too.

The example buttons took me a while to be found, but are good for syntax explanation. Thank you for making this available.

AlexanderGrooff [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Thanks for the kind words!
jonahx [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Nice work, I love ascii diagrams. Especially useful when you want a visual explanation that can be embedded directly in source code.

Small nit on layout: 90 degree joints should use "+" in the connecting lines, as they do in the boxes.

AlexanderGrooff [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Thanks for the recommendation. I've added the "+" corners in v0.5.1.
tiagoafpereira [3 hidden]5 mins ago
PhilipRoman [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I use https://metacpan.org/dist/Graph-Easy/view/bin/graph-easy There is a package perl-graph-easy for it in AUR (it's a command line frontend for the perl library)
zczc [3 hidden]5 mins ago
girvo [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Hah we rely on Mermaid a _heap_ at work for building internal dependency graphs from `yarn info` JSON data and a super lazy depth-first graph haha. Super useful, nice to see another renderer!

ts-directed-graph outputs Mermaid :)

This tool seems way more useful for hand-made ones, definitely bookmarking

danpalmer [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Out of interest have you managed to get Mermaid graphs rendering outside of a browser?

I was trying to do this a while back so I could do server side rendering of graphs, but it seemed to depend strongly on the presence of a DOM. Couldn’t quite get it working with JS-DOM either.

pjungwir [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I've used [mmdc](https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid-cli) to generate mermaid images from a Makefile. It looks like it is implemented with puppeteer, so perhaps it doesn't quite fit your request. But if you just want something you can use at the cli, it is great.
the_arun [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I use this for generating AWS deployment diagrams, which is kinda similar - https://github.com/mingrammer/diagrams
flykespice [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Wow! this will come pretty in hand when building plaintext documentation using diagrams.
abraxas [3 hidden]5 mins ago
In the age of AI someone automated Mentifex[1]!

[1] https://nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

piedpiper99 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I supposed it's good for basic usage. I just tried a more complex graph and it didn't render well.
nlake906 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
love it, will definitely be using it for sketching documentation in comments for SQL sprocs, etc.

One request: support for self-reference, i.e. "A --> A", "A --> A & B"

AlexanderGrooff [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I'm also noticing that's not working as intended.
AlexanderGrooff [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Fixed in 0.5.0. Give it a try!
ewalk153 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This would be great to build into project readme workflows.
kitd [3 hidden]5 mins ago
You can already use Mermaid in GitHub markdown:

https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/wor...

mcraiha [3 hidden]5 mins ago
dmonitor [3 hidden]5 mins ago
edflsafoiewq [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I don't like that it renders controls on top of the diagram.
octopusRex [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I'm disappointed. I was actually expecting lovely ascii art pictures of mermaids.
derfnugget [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Same. This is more than a nit. It's pretty much a need.
kleiba [3 hidden]5 mins ago
airstrike [3 hidden]5 mins ago

         ┌──────────────┐
         │ It's 2024... │
         └───────┬──────┘
                 │
    ╔════════════╧═════════════╗
    ║    I wish box drawing    ║
    ║ characters were the norm ║
    ╚══════════════════════════╝