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Pencil: open-source GUI prototyping tool
- huhtenberg 10y agoSeems like an abandoned project. Website copyright is 2012, last stable release 2013, last news update over a year ago. What's the context? Is it somehow notable regardless?
- josh64 10y agoWell they had 3.0 RC1 released in July 2016 http://pencil.evolus.vn/Next.html http://pencil.evolus.vn/Next.html and their GitHub page at https://github.com/evolus/pencil/ https://github.com/evolus/pencil/ is fairly active.
- a012 10y agoChecked issues page and not found an response from their dev in the first page, to me it's inactive. I wandered to this software awhile ago but then moved immediately to Lucidchart.com then Draw.io
- kagamine 10y agoThe company that make it is Vietnamese I think. They do some paid software too, and it looks like pencil is what the developer does when he has time. So I think the project is active, but not very active.
- jstoja 10y agoSeemed active only last summer: https://github.com/evolus/pencil/graphs/contributors https://github.com/evolus/pencil/graphs/contributors
- ksec 10y agoI guess they abandoned it after that then. May be someone will pick it up soon.
- kagamine 10y agoIt's free, and not a 2 week trial free. It helped me out just last week because employer has no license for paid software... The V3 release is quite recent and although the features are similar to earlier versions, the GUI is much improved. It is also Win/Apple/LINUX software, so projects should be portable. What lacks most of all, imo, is that finding sets of templates for newer OSes needs a bit of work. If I was the developer I would spend some time creating these myself, and then beg for donations on the back of that.
- macco 10y agoThere is a newer fork, that works an Pencil 2. https://github.com/prikhi/pencil https://github.com/prikhi/pencil
- gobusto 10y agoAt first, I thought that this was referring to https://github.com/pencil2d/pencil https://github.com/pencil2d/pencil
- kschiffer 10y agoBeen using this for a while due to student-related poorness. Gotta say it does what I want and has helped numerous times also in bigger projects. The low fidelity helps you focusing on gui structure.
- vsviridov 10y agoPoor native support on OSX. Doesn't even allow to Hide the window.
- comandillos 10y agothats the reason i stopped using this one, i started using Sketch and everything became much beautiful
- pqdbr 10y agoI love Balsamiq (desktop version), but lately I'm finding it such a memory hog on OS X that's rendering my machine unusable, and that's with not-so-large projects (30+ mockups)
- balsamiq 10y agowhoa that's no good! Can you please send some more details to support@balsamiq.com? It definitely shouldn't do that. Thanks!
- mch82 10y agoThe original project is abandoned, but a recently updated fork is available at github.com/prikhi/pencil. I prefer Pencil to more commonly referenced options like Balsamiq. Looks like no commits in a few months, but hopefully the form is still going. An open source UX tool focused on software application workflow prototyping rather than GUI layout is an asset to the software development community.
- murukesh_s 10y agoLooks like the original creators rebooted it under the github project https://github.com/evolus/pencil https://github.com/evolus/pencil.
- Londane 10y agocreated an HN-account to tell you: Thank you!
- mch82 10y agoThank you to your team for a great open source tool (assuming from your comment that you're one of the developers).
- nickpsecurity 10y agoIf you're on Pencil team, then you should know the links to zip's under Stencils and Templates are broken.
- elsurudo 10y agoConsider adding a downloadable build to the github page. I'm capable of doing it, but feeling little lazy to install using npm (mine is probably outdated etc.), but I'd definitely install a ready build.
- mgliwka 10y agoIt's not abandoned, but actually active again: There was a RC release of a rewrite in electron at the end of July, see here: http://pencil.evolus.vn/Next.html http://pencil.evolus.vn/Next.html.
- ensiferum 10y agoOr you can just use Qt's Designer which makes it very fast to knock up a GUI. (and then later evolve it into the real thing as well)
- kagamine 10y agoNot really, the 2 things are not alike and I don't think QT designer exports to PDF, web and png (one of which is what the project manager needs, not a project file that runs in an IDE). Not bashing QT, but QT designer is not a wireframing/mockup tool.
- ensiferum 10y agoOr you could build it into a executable and send that to the exec. I'd imagine that's better than a pdf/png picture, no?
- kagamine 10y agoProject managers want to put things in Word documents, they don't want executables, they don't want a demo. The point of wireframing is that the client doesn't look at it and go "this detail is wrong!" Wireframes and mockups should only communicate pre-prototype ideas, work-in-progress ideas and workflows. I think you might not understand what a tool like this is for if you think QT creator is better than every sketching tool on the market. Not a personal attack, but we seem to be talking in circles already.
- ensiferum 10y agoEntirely possible, I'm not an UX/UI expert and not familiar with that particular tool. Maybe it's more about crafting/prototyping the UX instead of the UI?
- vidarh 10y agoPretty much that - as someone else expressed in a joke: You don't want to send the message that it's about evaluating functionality and that you're lamost done. You want to send the message that this is a sketch to use as a basis for discussing flows. This is one of the reasons why find people taking pains in some of these type of tools to not make it look like the real deal, because the closer it looks to the real deal, the more some people get hung up on irrelevant details.
- pmlnr 10y agohttp://pencil.evolus.vn/Next.html http://pencil.evolus.vn/Next.html > Electron as the new runtime No. Just no.
- kagamine 10y agoWhy. Just why. edit: No really, why? Genuinely curious. You have to at least come with one reason after writing that.
- bruce_one 10y agoIndeed, seems like an odd complaint considering the existing application is just ZUL, so isn't it almost the same thing, but on FF instead?
- shakna 10y agoI've only seen one really well executed Electron-based tool: Visual Studio Code. It's fast, and isn't entirely an enormous executable (40-ish MB). However, most Electron apps are slow, laggy, and 100+ MB. It seems great when used by an expert, or great for a stopgap when you need to get something into public hands, but you plan on replacing it with something smaller and faster.
- k__ 10y ago> most Electron apps are slow, laggy, and 100+ MB. Yes, because it's common in (Node)JS land to add many dependencies. I guess MS simply coded most of the stuff on their own, which keeps the size low. Also, they use TypeScript and I heard that it reduces function polymorphism, which can increase performance (but I don't know how much). Also, as far as I know, VSCode runs plugins in different processes, which makes the main process snappier.
- smt88 10y agoTypeScript generates readable JS that is as close to the TypeScript source as possible. It doesn't do optimizations that I know of.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ldagon 10y agohttp://logicnet.dk/DiagramDesigner/ http://logicnet.dk/DiagramDesigner/ is a light and operational alternative to Pencil.
- cfrs 10y agoWindows only
- annnnd 10y agoI used this project about a year ago when I need a fast way to create wireframes, and was impressed! There are some rough edges here and there, but it Just Works. Kudos to developers!
- ausjke 10y agojust tried the electron-based new release(RC release) and it looks fantastic! I can do GUI design, and flowchart better than what I did with DIA.
- icc97 10y agoThis is a great product. Although not sure why suddenly it is appearing on HN. Version 2 worked well and Version 3 I find a bit more complex but still great. Above what they have on their website, there's various extra packs (stencils) [0] that you can install with Bootstrap elements and Android Material elements. Albeit that I find its better to keep to the sketchy UI as otherwise you focus too much on the details. [0]: http://nathanielw.github.io/pencil-stencils/
- ldjb 10y agoWe used Pencil on one of the modules I took at uni. I think that, aside from a bit of glitchiness (I remember having a spot of trouble pasting text), most of us got on quite well with it. It's relatively simple, but rather decent at what it does.
- ReedJessen 10y ago.vn is an interesting choice for a domain. The Vietnamese government has not been an ally of free speech or of sharing ideas around the globe.