Show HN: VNote 2.0 – PlantUML editing via Preview Tunnel | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: VNote 2.0 – PlantUML editing via Preview Tunnel

github.com

49 pointstamlok9 comments

This looks very interesting, how did I not know about it already? I was searching for what was available in the uml/diagram space (such as PlantUML, nomnoml, Mermaid, etc.) just last week. Obviously, VNote isn't just about diagrams, but the timing of this Show HN was interesting to me.

Any other suggestions for diagram generators that parse a text DSL and generate good looking charts & diagrams?

VNote is a Markdown note-taking app. Markdown is excellent to hold script such as PlantUML, mermaid, and so on. So it is possible to support DSL, too.

Yes, and I really like the idea of embedding the text definitions of diagrams in my markdown files, and being able to view it and export to html/pdf. Very nice.

I'm somewhat familiar with PlantUML, BlockDiag, Flowchart.js and a couple others, but am simply wondering if there are any really outstanding ones out there that I simply don't know about. For example, maybe one that's much more aesthetically pleasing, or maybe one that built-in support for the entire AWS ecosystem.

I recently saw a nice AWS diagrammer, but it's drag & drop, I don't think it has a way to build a diagram from a text description.

I just discover another way too. Visual studio code plus markdown preview enhanced. With vim mode you got pretty much the same thing.

For the developers among us that is just one plugin away.

https://shd101wyy.github.io/markdown-preview-enhanced/#/

This plugin just shows you the graph, right? VNote can scroll the corresponding element into view and highlight it, which is very helpful when the class diagram is really large on a small screen.

By the way, when you double click an element in the preview graph, VNote could highlight the originating definition code in the editor.

The Live Preview Tunnel, I think, is what makes VNote different from other editors. :)

This looks like a pretty serious piece of software, very nicely done.

I don't see anything that would pry me away from evil/orgmode/emacs but very compelling if you aren't using that combination yet.

Give it a try! :)

VNote supports Vim mode in the bone (Ctrl+J/K everywhere to navigate), Captain Mode (from the leader key of Vim), Navigation Mode (each widget shows two chars to select to focus), Universal Entry (just like CtrlP in Vim to search and jump), and so on.

That's great piece of software! I heavily use PlantUML but never found this kinds of nice editor before!

As a Qt newbie, I'm curious the reason why you choose Qt Widgets instead of QML. Maybe because it is hard to make it desktop-feel app using QML?

When I started VNote two years ago, I was just a traditional C++ player. So Qt Widgets is the choice. I think it can give me the most freedom and power.

When VNote did not support PlantUML, I used VS Code and plugin to edit and preview PlantUML. It is annoying that I need to scroll to the right element every time I update a line. Why not just hit the element corresponding to current line? So VNote provides this now.

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