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> Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them In general, don’t whiteboard sketches have a hand-dr

> Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them In general, don’t whiteboard sketches have a hand-drawn feel? Seems like the trick would be a tool to give diagramming tools a hand-drawn whiteboard sketch feel, or take hand-drawn whiteboard sketches and give them a diagramming feel. Could be neat to put this engine behind e.g. graphviz/dot, for instance, a la “sketch viz”: https://sketchviz.com/new https://sketchviz.com/new Or for the real parlor trick, emit a literally hand drawn whiteboard sketch in dot! PS. Many contributions to graphviz needed: https://graphviz.gitlab.io/doc/todo.html https://graphviz.gitlab.io/doc/todo.html

ghaff 6y ago
Nirvana for me is a tool that takes my really sloppy sketches and writing and converts it to something that looks like an actual sketch artist drew it. Maybe pick different styles. No idea how one would go about doing that though. (TBH, it would probably be a case of it being better to just hire an artist.)
- TheRealWatson 6y ago
  Some of these tools do exactly that. I draw my gross arcs, lines, ovals, rectangles and it renders much nicer ones, that feels like someone with way better motor skills had drawn it. I know Freehand does that.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I should probably look again. When I went through various tablet tools a few years back I didn't see anything that really did it for me. But I should probably take another look.
- pc86 6y ago
  Do people still use dribbble? If you can find a style there you like I'm willing to bet it would be more affordable than you'd think. I've always been surprised by the affordability of one-off graphic requests like these.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I'm not surprised. And I have a couple people at work who I could always ask for a favor for a given project. There's just a certain amount of friction with bringing a person in; it's not so much about the cost.
dahart 6y ago
> In general, don’t whiteboard sketches have a hand-drawn feel? Whiteboard sketches on a physical whiteboard do, but in general, computer “whiteboard” sketches are a mixed bag that IMO land more often on the side of straight lines and perfect circles, especially if you look around at which computer whiteboard products are commercially successful. > Seems like the trick would be a tool to give diagramming tools a hand-draw whiteboard sketch feel, or take hand-drawn whiteboard sketches and give them a diagramming feel. Here’s one example of the former: https://matplotlib.org/xkcd/examples/showcase/xkcd.html https://matplotlib.org/xkcd/examples/showcase/xkcd.html The latter, converting sketches to diagrams, would be neat and is an interesting & difficult problem. The thing that neither of these use-cases really cover is the need for a fast iteration / ideation tool in the exact same role as a physical whiteboard. Once you’re concerned about the presentation & look, the majority of time is spent working on the layout and the presentation because it takes longer to make it pretty than to just work out or communicate an idea without regard to beauty. Very small changes to where something goes or what it looks like can lead to a large and time-consuming ‘refactor’ of a diagram.

ghaff 6y ago

Nirvana for me is a tool that takes my really sloppy sketches and writing and converts it to something that looks like an actual sketch artist drew it. Maybe pick different styles. No idea how one would go about doing that though. (TBH, it would probably be a case of it being better to just hire an artist.)

TheRealWatson 6y ago
Some of these tools do exactly that. I draw my gross arcs, lines, ovals, rectangles and it renders much nicer ones, that feels like someone with way better motor skills had drawn it. I know Freehand does that.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I should probably look again. When I went through various tablet tools a few years back I didn't see anything that really did it for me. But I should probably take another look.
pc86 6y ago
Do people still use dribbble? If you can find a style there you like I'm willing to bet it would be more affordable than you'd think. I've always been surprised by the affordability of one-off graphic requests like these.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I'm not surprised. And I have a couple people at work who I could always ask for a favor for a given project. There's just a certain amount of friction with bringing a person in; it's not so much about the cost.

dahart 6y ago

> In general, don’t whiteboard sketches have a hand-drawn feel? Whiteboard sketches on a physical whiteboard do, but in general, computer “whiteboard” sketches are a mixed bag that IMO land more often on the side of straight lines and perfect circles, especially if you look around at which computer whiteboard products are commercially successful. > Seems like the trick would be a tool to give diagramming tools a hand-draw whiteboard sketch feel, or take hand-drawn whiteboard sketches and give them a diagramming feel. Here’s one example of the former: https://matplotlib.org/xkcd/examples/showcase/xkcd.html https://matplotlib.org/xkcd/examples/showcase/xkcd.html The latter, converting sketches to diagrams, would be neat and is an interesting & difficult problem. The thing that neither of these use-cases really cover is the need for a fast iteration / ideation tool in the exact same role as a physical whiteboard. Once you’re concerned about the presentation & look, the majority of time is spent working on the layout and the presentation because it takes longer to make it pretty than to just work out or communicate an idea without regard to beauty. Very small changes to where something goes or what it looks like can lead to a large and time-consuming ‘refactor’ of a diagram.