Draw.io releases open source desktop versions
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Since it's an electron app, I suspect there's going to be the flak about the memory usage.
But at the end of the day, these electron apps are fulfilling the need of users who enjoy desktop experiences of their essential web apps
But as you say, it was electron or nothing for us, no way we can justify native apps.
Honestly in an age where memory is so cheap I'd much rather have an Electron app for every conceivable thing (which take a fraction of the time to create) as opposed to fully fledged applications that only do a few things.
E: Having the tab open in Chrome appears to use more memory for me[0], perhaps because of the extensions I use?
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-FURY-DDR3-Memory-Module/dp/B...
Exact data is hard to find, but, for example, http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compon... claims 2 to 3 watt per stick. That seems very little compared to CPU, video card or backlight, but your RAM more or less uses that _continuously_. Power usage doesn't go down if you don't use your laptop/tablet/phone, or don't use part of the memory (this may be an area where innovation is possible). So, power drain while your laptop/tablet/phone isn't is used may be dominated by RAM power requirements.
As I said: hard data is difficult to find, so I don't know how big this effect is. I think power usage is an important reason why Apple keeps the amount of RAM in their tablets and phones fairly low, though.
http://alternativeto.net/software/electron/
One thing about these is that Electron can be optimized. I believe that one of the Visual Studio tools uses it and has dramatically lower memory than slack. Slack just doesn't try to improve performance.
This isn't Electron's fault. I have plenty Java apps just as guilty.
I do wish Slack was a better case for Electron. JavaScript isn't immune from leaky bad patterns, just the same as other langs/environments.
> it was electron or nothing for us
People forget this when demanding native versions. Creating multiple native apps is not free.
is there a native cocoa app that does latex diagrams
Draw.io is definitely in the top 10 of the most useful apps I've ever encountered. I'm constantly using it to illustrate my blog posts and videos, for mindmapping, for drawing diagrams that help me to understand some new idea I'm learning about(like React/Redux or Docker). And for website mockups of course.
If you haven't used it yet - I highly recommend it!
Some things I noticed about the menus (on Windows):
- The menus don't have hotkey support (Alt+…)
- The File menu is missing a Close option
- Submenus swich too soon on diagonal mouse movement
I'd suggest switching to native Windows menus. From other Electorn apps it seems this should be possible. I'm sure a way can be found to make the menu search feature work, too.
Another small note: on Windows, the close confirmation has the newer multi-option layout, the same you'd get when overwriting files in Explorer, but it only has an option to save changes. There is a cancel button, but that should really be an option.
Edit: memory measured with:
Get-Process -Name "draw.io" | %{$_.PM} | Measure-Object -Sum
https://metacpan.org/pod/App::Asciio
As it's not completely obvious, Asciio will save to plain text if you simply use the .txt extension, and else its own binary editable format.
Asciio is present in Debian/Ubuntu repositories.
Here's a demo: http://ivanceras.github.io/svgbob-editor/
Edit: nevermind, misunderstood; this isn't what you're looking for.
The key driver for the way we approach draw.io is the trust issue that all SaaS apps suffer from. Not only do they have your data, they have the app as well.
We always followed the approach of never store user data. On the app side of things, open sourcing the codebase went part of the way, but you'd still have to be technical enough to serve the app.
The Desktop versions are critical in that regard, you know you've got a tool that can't be taken away that will always open your diagrams (which you control the storage of).
You don't hear SaaS providers talking about this, because giving up control means lower profits, less chance of an IPO.