[s0l0ist]

I’m the author, I just got tired of using a DSL and wanted a way to programmatically write/build a graph and quickly see the rendering.

DLS-based diagramming tools like Terrastruct, mermaid, or graphviz definitely have their perks and are very well established for manual graph curation. But I found the lack of programmatic tooling (except terrastruct) a bit of a pain point.

[alixanderwang]

Congrats on the launch! I'm the author of D2 (Terrastruct). I won't comment on comparisons you want to make as it's your launch, but just to clarify, we do have a programmatic API:

- https://terrastruct.com/blog/post/generate-diagrams-programm...

- https://d2lang.com/tour/api/

[s0l0ist]

Thanks! Love your product! I didn’t mean to say you don’t have it. I’ll edit my other post.

[alixanderwang]

No worries at all, the API is definitely a bit hidden. Anyway, best of luck and feel free to reach out if you want to chat diagrams!

[s0l0ist]

Definitely!

[fyaliwnyfjsd]

Current user of D2, would really love a TypeScript API with Deno support.

[Veuxdo]

"DLS-based diagramming tools like Terrastruct, mermaid, or graphviz definitely have their perks and are very well established for manual graph curation. But I found the lack of programmatic a bit of a pain point."

Hi, creator of Ilograph[0] here. I agree with this if the DSL doesn't provide an IDE with autocomplete and instant-rendering (which I think applies to the technologies you mentioned).

With auto-complete and instant-rendering, I think a DSL is much preferable to Python (the most common "diagrams-as-code" language). Python is a programming language for writing, well, programs. It feels like complete overkill for creating static diagrams.

[0] https://www.ilograph.com

[foundry27]

This looks really interesting and I love how well put-together it feels! I wish your offline desktop software version had a one-time payment option though. Forcing SaaS subscriptions for non-SaaS is a big turn-off IMO.

[Veuxdo]

Thanks for the kind words! I appreciate the feedback and understand where you're coming from.

[s0l0ist]

Neat product! I like the interactivity.

For me (and my narrow use-case), I just couldn’t find a simple tool to sync my graph to somewhere that I could view it easily - especially after I’ve instrumented my application and deployed to the cloud.

[lazyasciiart]

I’ve been using this GitHub service https://github.com/dreampuf/GraphvizOnline

[s0l0ist]

Yeah that and http://magjac.com/graphviz-visual-editor/ are decent. But they will crash on medium/large graphs because the WebAssembly build of Graphviz that they use under the hood isn't compiled to allow memory growth.

[smusamashah]

A minor nitpick on the editor page https://vizdom.dev/editor/

The example drop down should either have names instead of Example 1..n. Or it should be changeable via keyboard. I have reached example 10 so far I think, but I have to keep track of example number in my head, open the dropdown, scroll the list and click the next number every single time. Edit: Yup, can't just go through all examples like this.

[s0l0ist]

Ah yeah, it’s been bugging me as well lol.

I definitely need to update that at some point.

[notepad0x90]

Sounds like an interesting app. But I just wanted to comment that I don't need an account to use draw.io and I can download an xml of the diagram just fine from them. I noticed you didn't mention them in your comment, so perhaps they are not a competition?

[s0l0ist]

Yeah not really competition as I see it. If you create graphs rarely or need to craft one manually then there are better tools out there.

Maybe my landing page is terrible, but you don’t need an account to download the npm package and start doing things locally.

That being said, I’m more interested in helping individuals who want to programmatically generate graphs - hundred+ updates to them per day, similar to how an APM/telemetry libs work. You instrument once and get the benefits of a real-time graph.

[jitl]

Can you explain the licensing? There’s several comments noting some closed source WASM blob.

[s0l0ist]

Sure! It’s Apache 2.0 licensed, but yes the binary wasm blob is what does all the work and is closed source for the time being.

It’s about 25k lines of rust code compiled to do the following:

- Layout/position a directed graph

- Compute a bounding box for text labels and produce font glyphs for the rendering engine

- Generate an SVG

- Optionally, sync to a Vizdom account

Fun fact, the majority of that wasm blob is what is powering the web application itself. You can see it in action using the editor view/diff on the site.

[jitl]

I free to redistribute the WASM blob to my end users? The blob itself is Apache? I know binaries can be under Apache without being source available but I just want o make sure I understand correctly

[s0l0ist]

Yes exactly!