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Mermaid – Generation of diagrams and flowcharts from text
- pritambaral 8y agoWe used mermaid.js for a while. I didn't like the fact that it worked only in a browser, and installing phantom.js (which installed a whole pre-compiled binary of Chromium) was painful. We also ran into some limitations on how we could control the final display. So we moved all our diagrams to PlantUML and found ourselves quite happy with it.
- achamayou 8y agoI’ve used mermaid for documentation, through plugins for mkdocs and Sphinx. What’s great about it is that the diagrams are stored as readable source text in the documentation, which is easy to diff and modify along with the rest of the doc (search and replace when renaming a component etc). That’s a huge benefit compared to storing rendered bitmaps, with a source file next to them. There’s much more friction involved in keeping those up to date, the changes don’t display usefully in PRs etc. They’re almost never up to date as a result. Another thing mermaid lets you easily do is generate sequence diagrams from code such as testcases, because the format is so simple and line-driven. The outpout can also be included in documentation as samples, and is guaranteed to be up-to-date.
- n1000 8y agotypora.io renders mermaid and some others in markdown documents https://support.typora.io/Draw-Diagrams-With-Markdown/ https://support.typora.io/Draw-Diagrams-With-Markdown/
- sorokod 8y agoNot "in" markdown documents but "from". In the documents the diagram markdown is rendered as itself . When exporting markdown to pdf for example, the diagram markdown is rendered as a diagram.
- andreareina 8y agoFor anyone interested in generating diagrams from text, I recommend also taking a look at Graphviz[1] and PlantUML[2]. Graphviz excels at box-and-arrow kind of diagrams as well as graphs, I frequently use it to visually map out dependencies, processes and state transitions, etc. There's an online version here[3]. PlantUML I use less, both because it's slower (you pay the JVM startup tax on every invocation) and because I have less use for the kind of diagrams it specializes in. [1] https://graphviz.com https://graphviz.com [2] http://plantuml.com http://plantuml.com [3] https://dreampuf.github.io/GraphvizOnline/ https://dreampuf.github.io/GraphvizOnline/
- flarg 8y agoPlantuml is pretty good because it like a mini programming language for diagrams, and not just UML. There's also UMLet which I often read recommend.
- metaphor 8y agoA quick correction to citation: [1] https://www.graphviz.org/ https://www.graphviz.org/
- tomkludy 8y agoAnd https://www.websequencediagrams.com https://www.websequencediagrams.com
- doug1001 8y agographviz: rock solid, and bindings for just about every language
- leemailll 8y agoDoes this offer something different from Ditaa or Graphviz?
- jalk 8y agoSequence diagrams for one. You could probably do those in graphviz but not without serious fiddeling/invisible nodes and other tricks that would make your source far from being succinct, which is kind of the whole point
- pritambaral 8y agoPlantUML supports sequence diagrams, and a whole lot else.
- mch82 8y agoThanks for sharing! Just tried some UML sequence diagrams and this looks like it’ll be a lot more convenient than other UML tools. Here’s the syntax guide: https://github.com/mermaidjs/mermaid-gitbook/blob/master/content/sequenceDiagram.md https://github.com/mermaidjs/mermaid-gitbook/blob/master/con... Edit: And here’s a plugin for VS Code that adds a live render pane to the text editor - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vstirbu.vscode-mermaid-preview https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vstirbu....
- JetSpiegel 8y agoThis is integrated with Gitlab, you can use it in every textbox.
- EamonnMR 8y agoWe use this to diagram our systems at a high level in documentation. It can be fiddly to get it exactly how you want it but it's a lot faster and easier to version control then, say, PowerPoint.
- hunta2097 8y agoFYI: Mermaid is supported in Markdown on both GitLab and GitHub. It's awesome, I hope they continue to extend it.
- abc3 8y agoHas anyone managed to make decent looking org charts using Mermaid or one of the other text-based diagram generators mentioned in this thread? I've been looking for a way to make it easier for the one person we have who is working in HR to update the org chart each time we make a new hire. As bureaucratic as an org chart can be, keeping our up-to-date makes it easier for new people to figure out who everyone else is, and also helps existing staff figure out where newer employees fit in.