3 ms·
The license for the proprietary layout engine (TALA), was quoted to me as US$240 for 12 months of updates. For comparison, a personal license for IntelliJ IDEA
by oftenwrong 4y ago
The license for the proprietary layout engine (TALA), was quoted to me as US$240 for 12 months of updates. For comparison, a personal license for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate is US$169 (for the first year; less for subsequent years). As an active user and proponent of text-to-diagram tools, and as someone who isn't shy about paying for software (including my personal IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate license), I'm keen on buying a better layout engine, but IMO this price-point is a bit much.
- Yahivin 4y agoIf it saves you at least 15 minutes a month then it sounds like a bargain.
- unshavedyak 4y agoDumb question if i may, but what is the time saving with "an alternate layout engine"? Ie i don't even know what a layout engine is in this context, and how it would save me time over FOSS versions like mermaid. I'm tempted to give it a shot, but i don't get what the paid version would actually net me. I'm toying with the Playground now, and in many (most?) cases the TALA version (which i think is the paid version?) seems identical to the Dagre version (Mermaid, i think?) I'm also having difficulty finding where i'd even buy it. Hmm edit: Ah https://terrastruct.com/tala/ https://terrastruct.com/tala/ might have some of my answers
- alixanderwang 4y agoIt's not really time-saving. It's aesthetics, how much you care about the beauty and professionalism of your diagrams. All the layout engines will get the correctness right -- all the connections point to where you want em, etc. But they'll often do so in different ways. Eg: https://text-to-diagram.com/?example=chess&b=d2&layout_b=dagre https://text-to-diagram.com/?example=chess&b=d2&layout_b=dag...