Show HN: ShakyDraw – Hand-drawn block diagrams from plain text

If you&#x27;re on macOS, definitely check out Monodraw [1] as a quick and easy way to create such diagrams (then copy + paste into ShakyDraw). Just remember to set your document alphabet to ASCII and you&#x27;re good to go (from the inspector).<p>Full disclosure: I&#x27;m the developer of Monodraw. If you have any questions, happy to answer here.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;monodraw.helftone.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;monodraw.helftone.com</a>

I want the opposite. Draw a block diagram on paper, scan it, and get a super swank omnigraffle-style diagram from it (or a top-notch ASCII art diagram).

Great! The easy problem is solved. Now let&#x27;s do the reverse so that I can hand-draw ditaa diagrams.

In a perfect world, everything is generated from ASCII diagram sources: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sigvef&#x2F;sigvehtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sigvef&#x2F;sigvehtml</a> .

If you like this, try SvgBobRus[0], which also converts plain-text diagrams into graphics (and has a larger vocabulary). There&#x27;s also Spongedown[1], which makes it possible to embed these diagrams in your Markdown files and render the whole thing to HTML + SVG.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ivanceras&#x2F;svgbobrus" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ivanceras&#x2F;svgbobrus</a> [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ivanceras&#x2F;spongedown" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ivanceras&#x2F;spongedown</a>

Well executed solution to a problem I don&#x27;t understand as one that needs solving?

And where is stated mraleph codebase to go from ascii to an image? I&#x27;d like a command line tool to convert locally, or this open sourced so I can host a local version.

Aw. I wrote something last year to translate old documents with plain text boxes and arrows to Unicode line drawing characters. This was a small part of another project. It&#x27;s here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;John-Nagle&#x2F;pasv&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;src&#x2F;Util&#x2F;picfix.py" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;John-Nagle&#x2F;pasv&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;src&#x2F;Util&#x2F;picf...</a>

Chracters all appear as tofu on iOS safari.

In Edge I&#x27;m getting the following error which means no diagram gets rendered:<p><pre><code> SCRIPT5007: Unable to get property &#x27;ready&#x27; of undefined or null reference bundle.min.js (1,5413)</code></pre>

We need ShakyDraw + Asciiflow to be 1 instrument

Damn useful and easy to create flow diagrams.

Very useful and would be more useful in form of an API that could be used with Markdown text.

I wish there was a feature to double click a phrase and auto draw the ASCII box around it.

hmm. isnt this like more difficult than actually drawing it?

this page has to be bookmarked. well done

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asciidraw.com&#x2F;#Draw" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asciidraw.com&#x2F;#Draw</a><p>^This is what I use to generate the boxes and other useful shapes &amp; then put that into shakydraw.