5 ms·

Does anyone know of a way to draw figures that look like old-fashioned textbook illustrations, which I believe weere hand drawn in India ink? My father's physi

Does anyone know of a way to draw figures that look like old-fashioned textbook illustrations, which I believe weere hand drawn in India ink? My father's physics books from the fifties are just beautiful.

cloverich 7y ago
Can you share some links or images? I'm becoming slowly fascinated with this sort of look and collecting them. I dream one day i'll have the time to make a component or charting library that implements them.
- jimhefferon 7y ago
  Here are a couple from a book I could find right away. https://imgur.com/gallery/K3iBxgm https://imgur.com/gallery/K3iBxgm From a 1948 text by McGraw-Hill.
buckminster 7y ago
This is amazing: https://github.com/jemmybutton/fiziko https://github.com/jemmybutton/fiziko There's an excellent blog post by the author with many more illustrations but I can't find it right now. Edit: found it! https://habr.com/en/post/454376/ https://habr.com/en/post/454376/
- jimhefferon 7y ago
  Yes, I have seen those, thank you. They are indeed absolutely wonderful. But I had something else in mind. I posted a couple of examples under an adjacent reply.
- IanCal 7y ago
  Those are lovely, thanks for sharing them!
- hirenj 7y ago
  If I had an infinite amount of time, I would love to convert this over to run in the browser / SVG.. I hope there are some enterprising young souls out there who are keen on the challenge!
ggerganov 7y ago
Similarly, is there a simple way/tool to generate ascii diagrams?
- evilduck 7y ago
  On a Mac: https://monodraw.helftone.com https://monodraw.helftone.com but it's no longer under active development.
- rb808 7y ago
  http://asciiflow.com/ http://asciiflow.com/ is awesome and free
zellyn 7y ago
Paging fogleman (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fogleman https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fogleman) :-)
heinrichhartman 7y ago
How about a pencil and ink? Then scan it in, and clean it up.
- jimhefferon 7y ago
  Alas, while I want to produce accurate and attractive figures, after trying hard for many years, I find that my talents just do not turn that way. I write texts that are free, so I am unable to pay someone to do it. At this point I use Asymptote, which does a very good job in the accuracy area and is perfectly professional in appearance. But I just love these figures and I wish I could convince my computer to turn them out.
  - strbean 7y ago
    I think parent's suggestion could work great if you printed the Asymptote results and then traced them in ink and scanned those. As for computer generating that style, I might look for brushes for Photoshop/GIMP/Illustrator/Inkscape that produce the style you are looking for, and then reverse engineer those or use scripting capabilities of whichever tool to produce the figures.

cloverich 7y ago

Can you share some links or images? I'm becoming slowly fascinated with this sort of look and collecting them. I dream one day i'll have the time to make a component or charting library that implements them.

jimhefferon 7y ago
Here are a couple from a book I could find right away. https://imgur.com/gallery/K3iBxgm https://imgur.com/gallery/K3iBxgm From a 1948 text by McGraw-Hill.

buckminster 7y ago

This is amazing: https://github.com/jemmybutton/fiziko https://github.com/jemmybutton/fiziko There's an excellent blog post by the author with many more illustrations but I can't find it right now. Edit: found it! https://habr.com/en/post/454376/ https://habr.com/en/post/454376/

jimhefferon 7y ago
Yes, I have seen those, thank you. They are indeed absolutely wonderful. But I had something else in mind. I posted a couple of examples under an adjacent reply.
IanCal 7y ago
Those are lovely, thanks for sharing them!
hirenj 7y ago
If I had an infinite amount of time, I would love to convert this over to run in the browser / SVG.. I hope there are some enterprising young souls out there who are keen on the challenge!

ggerganov 7y ago

Similarly, is there a simple way/tool to generate ascii diagrams?

evilduck 7y ago
On a Mac: https://monodraw.helftone.com https://monodraw.helftone.com but it's no longer under active development.
rb808 7y ago
http://asciiflow.com/ http://asciiflow.com/ is awesome and free

zellyn 7y ago

Paging fogleman (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fogleman https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fogleman) :-)

heinrichhartman 7y ago

How about a pencil and ink? Then scan it in, and clean it up.

jimhefferon 7y ago
Alas, while I want to produce accurate and attractive figures, after trying hard for many years, I find that my talents just do not turn that way. I write texts that are free, so I am unable to pay someone to do it. At this point I use Asymptote, which does a very good job in the accuracy area and is perfectly professional in appearance. But I just love these figures and I wish I could convince my computer to turn them out.
- strbean 7y ago
  I think parent's suggestion could work great if you printed the Asymptote results and then traced them in ink and scanned those. As for computer generating that style, I might look for brushes for Photoshop/GIMP/Illustrator/Inkscape that produce the style you are looking for, and then reverse engineer those or use scripting capabilities of whichever tool to produce the figures.