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This looks really cool. I'd love to see it cross-platform. There's an interesting pattern developing (hopefully). Things that used to be GUI-only are now getti
by DanielBMarkham 8y ago
This looks really cool. I'd love to see it cross-platform.
There's an interesting pattern developing (hopefully). Things that used to be GUI-only are now getting text interfaces, many times with some modified version of markdown. I made a free tool to capture analysis notes and diagrams a while back. You can see a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFVfTpXCIiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFVfTpXCIiI As part of that, at the lowest level of detail I wanted a way to capture diagrams using plain text. Something universal.
We're almost there -- not quite there, but close. I found ways to do Activity Diagrams, flowcharts, domain models, and some other stuff using text. The formats were just a bit too dissimilar for comfort.
Why use text for all sorts of things that used to be graphical? Version control, text slicing and dicing, separation of document from view.
I'd love to see this trend continue, along with a consolidation into a super-markdown syntax. It could handle calendaring, diagramming, perhaps even layout -- along with what it currently does. I don't think you'd have to hack it up too much, but admittedly I haven't looked into the spec that much.
- j45 8y agoAgreed on needing to be cross-platform. Evernote with this type of functionality would almost be there.
- nerdponx 8y agoThe endgame for this, IMO, is GUI tools that generate and manipulate text-based file formats. The tool Lyx does this; it's a kinda-WYSIWYG Latex editor. I'd like to see more of these, e.g. for Markdown, Graphviz, and OpenSCAD.
- anaphylactic 8y agoI'm guessing XML doesn't count as a text-based file format? Otherwise, that's what every office suite (technically a zip file of XML files, but that's splitting hairs), vector editor, and graphical HTML editor already does. Anyway, I especially like the `sc` spreadsheet format and editor as an example of a GUI tool that works with text-based file formats. Despite the giant disclaimer at the top of each file saying not to edit it, it's shockingly human-friendly.
- nerdponx 8y agoXML is OK, but it's not exactly human-readable, nor does it play well with version control tools. You can actually edit OpenSCAD and Markdown files and be reasonably productive.
- nerdponx 8y agoFor anyone who happens to come see this post from the future: FreeCAD does have an OpenSCAD interface, and Gephi (I think) has some kind of Graphviz import/export feature.
- IncRnd 8y agoI'd looked at Noteplan previously, and it is a nice implementation. They may want to re-read the first review that they have posted on their site, meant to support the product. It says, "Well thought through, nicely designed and untuitively to use." Untuitive is not a word, however it is also listed as slang in the urban dictionary as the opposite of intuitive. "I couldn't figure out how to use that web app, the navigation was untuitive." I'm sure the review meant intuitive not untuitive, but being the very first review listed on their home page, it may make sense to fix the listing in order to not to give people the wrong impression.