Text to Diagram Tools

Y	Hacker News new \| ask \| show \| jobs

	Text to Diagram Tools (text-to-diagram.com)
	118 points by laithshadeed 1296 days ago

15 comments

gnabgib 1296 days ago

This was brought up several times in the D2 thread 9 days ago (626pts, 153 comments)[0], since D2 built this to help showcase their feature set. Lots of the discussion there applies.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33704254

link

swyx 1296 days ago

i collect these tools for fun! https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#cod...

- https://gojs.net/latest/samples/decisionTree.html interactive diagrams

- http://blockdiag.com/en/

- python's diagrams https://pypi.org/project/diagrams/

- https://structurizr.com/

- https://github.com/mhlabs/cfn-diagram visualize cloudformation -> draw.io

- https://wavedrom.com/ (OSS) - Digital Timing Diagram or Waveform from simple textual description.

- way more tools here: https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/

link

mlajtos 1296 days ago

Here is one that is missing: https://github.com/mlajtos/moniel

link

t0k0l0sh 1296 days ago

Diagrams lets you draw the cloud system architecture in Python code.

https://diagrams.mingrammer.com/

link

yupis 1296 days ago

Do you have any suggestions for creating a time-line?

link

alixanderwang 1296 days ago

whoa nice list! (ty for not naming it another awesome-something lol). xosh.org one is what we used as a starting point to find and try out every text-to-diagram tool when we were doing research for D2. i don't think they're maintained anymore, but we included a link to them in our README anyway too.

link

MilStdJunkie 1296 days ago

I've been playing with Vega bit lately, because of the support for geo graphs and violin/box/"R Stuff" graphs.

Vega is theoretically available in Asciidoctor-diagram, but not everything is supported yet :(

Project

https://vega.github.io/vega/

Sandbox

https://vega.github.io/editor/#/custom/vega

Geo example

https://vega.github.io/editor/#/examples/vega/airport-connec...

Box plot example

https://vega.github.io/editor/#/examples/vega/box-plot

link

tonerow 1296 days ago

https://flowchart.fun is one option – it has a really straight-forward syntax

link

alixanderwang 1296 days ago

hi, I'm Alex at Terrastruct and we made this. we just launched D2 last week, where this site was brought up plenty, so I didn't expect this to come up again. happy to answer q's if any.

(we're working on a playground so that this site's examples can be runnable!)

i'll also use this opportunity to plug that this next release of D2 is going to be packed with features/improvements/fixes that came from feedback received on HN from the launch:

https://github.com/terrastruct/d2/blob/master/ci/release/cha... https://github.com/terrastruct/d2/pull/259

link

news_hacker 1296 days ago

I would love an AI-enabled chat bot that transforms text -> diagrams. Diagram creation could still be a lot easier.

For example: "I want to show that the causes of burnout are the following 5 categories: 1) lack of purpose, 2) community breakdown, 3) ... " -> and then that gets turned into a diagram. Then an update like: "make lack of purpose more prominent" and it increases in size.

I would even settle for a transformer that converts natural language to one of the diagram syntax languages in the OP link.

link

zdw 1296 days ago

If you want to integrate both text and freeform diagramming, the diagrams.net tool will support embedding Mermaid:

https://www.diagrams.net/blog/mermaid-diagrams

They're not editable afterward, but it sometimes comes in handy if you want to render them out as an image for a document/presentation.

link

alixanderwang 1296 days ago

Terrastruct offers this too, with the bonus that the freeform changes get saved to the text: https://youtu.be/EhxVVkxv2Ns?t=128

(it is a paid product though, whereas diagrams.net is free)

link

flanked-evergl 1296 days ago

Diagrams.net also supports plantuml and you can edit them afterwards.

link

laithshadeed 1296 days ago

Source: https://github.com/terrastruct/text-to-diagram-site

link

roflyear 1296 days ago

Anyone know of a good tool that will generate some annotations in Python code (maybe docstrings??) to similar diagrams?

Googling brings up a few but nothing that looks super promising.

link

karmakaze 1296 days ago

Another ERD diagram site I've used is https://dbdiagram.io/

link

omarhaneef 1296 days ago

If only something like this were part of markdown.

(And here on HN, I hope someone is going to say: yes, this vscode extension will add it to markdown)

link

topspin 1296 days ago

Was just looking at BPMN.io tools: a BPMN and DMN diagram rendering engine. Really nice work. Badgeware license though.

link

roflyear 1296 days ago

What are you using BPMN for?

link

topspin 1296 days ago

Lots of stuff. Lately for certificate management workflows: orchestrating all the people and processes involved in the creation and maintenance of public keys and certificates, renewals, revocations, etc.

link

delta_p_delta_x 1296 days ago

Missing TikZ and pgfplots.

With GitHub Copilot, TikZ just became a lot more discoverable and somewhat nicer to use.

link

alexitosrv 1296 days ago

Guys, for computer network representation, graphs mostly, do you have a preference?

link

lowbloodsugar 1296 days ago

Any of 'em do state machines?

link

alixanderwang 1296 days ago