Monodraw – a non-subscription, powerful ASCII art editor | Hacker News Reader

Monodraw – a non-subscription, powerful ASCII art editor

blog.helftone.com

145 pointsBrajeshwar36 comments

I like the idea of ASCII diagram editors but... Mac only and doesn't actually use ASCII as it's format? However shiny it's interface may be that seems to defeat the purpose of the portability you are supposed to get.

I've been using https://asciiflow.com/#/ to make and edit simple diagrams, it's fairly basic but sufficient for 90% of what I want so far. But would be happy to discover other editors (this is text, after all, lockin is impossible.)

It generates ASCII, or svg, or png or a variety of things. Who cares what format it stores it in. The things you generate with it are totally portable.

You may as well complain that we shouldn't write code in interpreted languages like Ruby and Perl and node because they're _also_ not portable to anyone who doesn't have the interpreter installed. But heck, compiled languages like Go and C are also not portable unless you've got the compiler installed. Only their artifacts are. We may as well abandon this whole programming thing.

Or, maybe... maybe things can still be incredibly useful even if it's only their artifacts that are portable.

The format is proprietary; source encoding and almost all PLs are not. I can install Ruby, you can install Ruby, for free, or even write my own interpreter... I cannot install Monodraw, even with money.

A big part of the lure of ASCII drawings is portability and openness on the same level as plain text.

I'm not sure what you mean by not using ASCII as its format. It lets you export as plain (ASCII) text, but the document format for the app itself also needs to keep hold of all the additional metadata related to vector shapes and groups. So it follows that the plain text representation isn't going to be sufficient to model such a document.

> It lets you export as plain (ASCII) text, but the document format for the app itself also needs to keep hold of all the additional metadata related to vector shapes and groups.

Yes this is exactly what I mean, exporting ASCII != using ASCII as the format. ASCII flow (although substantially less featureful) shows that it is possible to do reasonable shape inference directly from ASCII, and frankly this is preferable to lugging a load of proprietary application documents around with your ASCII diagrams (even though it's obviously more limited)... otherwise why bother with ASCII.

The inference in Asciiflow is quite impressive. From my perspective it falls a little short of providing a great experience, but each to their own.

I really like asciiflow except for its arrow handling. Not sure why, but drawing the following appears to be impossible:

    ─┬─
     │
     ▲
     │
    ─┴─

Instead you will always get:

    ─┬─
     │
     ▼
     │
    ─┴─

Even using the freeform tool to fix the arrow doesn't work.

I've searched, and haven't found any other decent ascii editors that run on Linux. Any pointers would be very welcome.

There's a tool called JavE, which was quite good 13 years ago: http://www.jave.de/developer/milestone6rc2.html

While it is quite feature-packed, its character set is limited to actual ASCII.

In a recent exploration of the domain, textik.com is rather bare bones, but does have some interesting features. In particular, it recognizes certain spots on the border of a rectangle as connection points. Drawing a line between two connection points establishes that similar to how drawing programs handle lines - including the "if you drag that rectangle around now, the lines connected to the connection points adjust too."

The given URL is about what's new in 1.6 and mostly boils down to:

* "app icon, document icon and welcome window",

* "ability to simultaneously edit multiple shapes of the same type",

* "minimum OS requirement has been raised to macOS 11 Big Sur".

For an overview of the software, see this URL: https://monodraw.helftone.com/

Monodraw is one of my favorite macOS applications. It’s really well made and - I don’t know how else to put this - lots of fun. I used it for all diagrams in compilerbook.com and now use it to create diagrams of control-flow graphs that I can then copy&paste as text comments into test cases. Highly recommend it.

Monodraw is awesome, best $10 I've ever spent: https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/box-dra...

Also its fun to use wrong tools for the right job, like using an overkill $8k/seat license (Altium Designer) ECAD tool to draw diagrams. Why the hell not!?: https://neil.computer/notes/ecad-diagrams/

I'd pay the 10$ instantly if it get's linux support. Is there something similar that works on linux? Asciiflow is quite limited

I stumbled on this, very likely here on Hackernews, long back. Back then, I loved the App Icon, and then the interface, and even used it few times. I bought it and kept it, hoping to use it but my needs never needed to do this on a regular basis.

This is a tool that outputs plain text that can be opened by any other tool. Definitely not a painkiller but a good to have vitamin by your side.

I believe the team is a tiny two-member team, and they are NOT yet subscribed to the dark side. Reading on their blog, here is there first post when they released it https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-reveal/

Update: Looked up my purchase history. Bought it for $19.99 on Apr 6, 2017.

It reminds me of coloring in character grids in my TRS-80 programming manual to create UI designs. If I close my eyes I can still smell the papyrus.

Looks nice and something I could use.

However, I have a rough time buying into apps that are built for one platform only.

I move daily between Mac, Linux and occasionally windows and want the tools I put time and money into to be available in all platforms.

Yes, the creation/edition process must happen on macOS but the produced file may be exported as a text file and you get the original file and as such you are not locked in a proprietary format. To me it looks different than other image editing software. I mean, you could make the drawing without monopic with a text editor, it is just a convenience, but it is a really good one.

Then use some Electron trash instead.

I’ve really enjoyed Monodraw, it does what it does extremely well. My one main complaint is that the great thing about ASCII art is its portability, but Monodraw seems to require that you keep its native file format around if you don’t want to lose shape information. I’d absolutely love an app that perhaps used machine learning or just some heuristics to import plain text and detect lines, shapes and add handles to them. Perhaps Monodraw does this and I’ve not discovered it but it doesn’t happen during normal roundtripping of text.

A slightly unorthodox but fun usage of Monodraw is making maps for text-based games: https://twitter.com/guregu/status/1256167193659633668

Monodraw is an awesome tool to have in the toolbox. It's just damn fun to use. It got me out of a hole during my most recent foray into education too.

People's biggest complaint everytime it's mention on here seem to be that there's no WinX version. Okay, if you want one then go write one? I know I'd pay € for it.

I've been stuck in a WinX world recently and have started using Kroki for structured graphable info. For the most part it 'works' but it's not as much fun to just draw like Monodraw allows. Asciidraw doesn't quite hit the same sweet spots for me and I find it finicky and inaccurate.

Mac Only ? :/

Looks cool and seems valid if you run MacOS. On Linux you could try Emacs picture mode together with artist mode if you want to draw small diagrams for readmes and such. The first one can draw boxes around text, the second mode connects them with arrows. You can then render the resulting pictures to PNG using ditaa.

on emacs why not use PlantUML ? It's not the same thing of course, because you're not "drawing" but it seems a better solution for a manual text entry than actually trying to _draw_ diagrams.

Well-designed/built, one-time purchase, actually useful functionality - I bought it.

Would love to see the snippets part get more attention (like git integration or similar) and would be interesting to see if animation creation could be added in the next version (think ascii animations).

Something not mentioned here is http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/ This project is in java (ew) but it's open source and could probably use a rewrite in something more modern.

just want to say that I've been using this for years now and it's _so_ good. I love that i can also create nice looking SVGs from it. But i've used the ASCII export on multiple occasions to provide context for complex systems / concepts in code.

If you want the real old school ASCII/ANSI experience run TheDraw in DOSEMU.

I use it sometimes. It's good for fast drafting of diagrams.

Is non-subscription a feature?

Is there a subscription-based ASCII art editor out there?

FML.

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