8 ms·
Developer of the app here, happy to answer any questions.
by milen 1y ago
Developer of the app here, happy to answer any questions.
- hiltmon 1y agoHuge fan of the product, just wanted to say Thank You :)
- milen 1y agoAppreciated!
- coxley 1y agoAre there any enhancements that you've wanted to do, but haven't had the time? I'm a huge fan, and am surprised how stable Monodraw has been for me. I've kept a single, growing document open as a scratch pad for the last three years. The only downtime was converting it to the new-ish file format haha.
- milen 1y agoThe top two features I want to add next are table support and some form of auto layout (like flexbox). I really care about stability and performance, so I’m happy to hear that it’s being appreciated.
- dboon 1y agoThere’s this layout library in C called clay which is basically a renderer agnostic flex box style layout engine. You might be interested in reading its source!
- milen 1y agoYeah, there's a few such libraries that I'm aware of but I haven't had time to evaluate them. I do plan to at least look into them and make decision from there.
- junon 1y agonucleic/kiwi uses the same algorithm that autolayout uses. It's also a tried and true implementation I've used many times, including in console environments.
- coxley 1y agoBoth would be sick! I do spend quite a bit of time making my own "tables" and re-arranging things.
- chang1 1y agoGreat app... it's had a place on my macOS dock for years. I use it for adding diagrams to my team's internal developer documentation (mostly in a series of Markdown files).
- nati0n 1y agoI don't use the app often, but I felt comfortable purchasing because it wasn't a subscription. The few times I do want ASCII art, it does the job perfectly, so it works super well to have in my back pocket. Thanks for not going the subscription route.
- milen 1y agoThat makes sense - I deliberately did not go down the subscription route.
- Shadowmist 1y agoBuying it right now just for this reason.
- zevon 1y agoSame here. And the app itself is just so charming. :)
- FeloniousHam 1y agoJust want to say thanks for a great app. It's one of my favorite tools, even though I don't get to use it that often.
- milen 1y agoThank you!
- akupila 1y agoLike many others I also want to express my gratitude for a fantastic app. I bought it in 2016 and it’s seen a lot of use since then (recently almost daily). Being able to copy to clipboard for adding diagrams in source code is the killer feature!
- commandersaki 1y agoBest app on mac hands down.
- benjaminleonard 1y agoI'm a big fan of Monodraw and use it frequently for ASCII assets / animations for https://oxide.computer https://oxide.computer. I'd love some scripting features, to create and edit designs through code. But I'm aware my use case is a little niche.
- ciaranmca 1y agoThat animated ascii art on your site is really cool, something I will definitely have to keep in mind for documenting some of my projects in future.
- ivangelion 1y agoYou "little niche" use case inspired me, really beautiful
- klik99 1y agoNice! I was wondering if it would be good for making ascii art assets for roguelike games (for example: https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/12/cogmind-ascii-art-gallery/ https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/12/cogmind-ascii-art... or https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/ https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/) - some of the art you've made for oxide thinks it must be good for that!
- jefurii 1y agoThe Cogmind dev made his own tool called REXPaint which is mentioned elsewhere on this page.
- klik99 1y agoYeah I'm very familiar with Josh Ge and Rex - my current project uses rex files for loading images - I just have a lot of metadata I bake in through hacky ways and rex format is not very flexible - rexpaint is great though
- rbanffy 1y agoNice! Does it support the new 3x2 and 4x2 mosaic characters (and the HP big 3x3 cell letters) from recent Unicode specs?
- efreak 1y agoAny more information about this? I can't find anything.
- rbanffy 1y agoUnicode 13 added the 3x2s and 16 the 4x2s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing_Supplement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing_S...
- efreak 1y agoThank you. I was searching for 3x2 and combination and the likes.
- rbanffy 1y ago3x2 were more popular, used in, among others, Teletext and the TRS-80. The only place we found the 4x2s was the Kaypro portable (using the upper 128 positions of the character generator plus a reverse video bit to get all 265 combinations).
- tailspin2019 1y agoI love Monodraw, been using it for years. Keep up the good work! Was going to politely ask for full dark mode but just noticed from your blog that it seems to be on the way?
- tasuki 1y agoI'd expect more of an introduction: > Harness the Power and Simplicity of Plain Text Nice tagline, but surely it's not just plain text. It's some unicode shenanigans. How does one make sure their console can display all the necessary characters? How does one make sure others can see their creation?
- dravine 1y agoI just wanted to say thanks for making it. I love this app, use it all the time, and the only thing I wish for is a version for Linux. Bravo.
- butlike 1y agoJust wanted to say: really love the app. Been using it for years. I love the image overlay since I mainly enjoy making ascii renditions of pictures manually by hand.
- mathfailure 1y agoWhy do you GEO-block?
- abtinf 1y agoI am trying it for the first time. One point of feedback, with the caveat that my only experience so far is opening the tutorial: I immediately hate that when intending to scroll vertically using the trackpad on my macbook, it constantly unintentionally scrolls horizontally as well and I have to correct it. It is particularly irritating since there is no content on the canvas to see when scrolling. Maybe I'm just super accustomed to browser scrolling behaviors, which snap scrolling based on initial direction. I'm mostly posting this because its the kind of papercut that might be forgotten over time.
- hazn 1y agoas a counterpoint, not critique: i am a fan of this precision
- abtinf 1y agoI’ve now spent a couple hours using it. Once I started using it for actual diagrams, the issue completely faded away. Scrolling a super long vertical-only document is an unimportant edge case. This is the god damn holy grail of ascii chart editing. Well done.
- therealfiona 1y agoAny plans for a Linux version? Sounds super cool, but I can't run it.
- cjk 1y agoThanks for Monodraw. I've used it for years and thoroughly enjoy it.
- myfonj 1y agoWhat is the Unicode support? Namely the "Symbols for Legacy Computing"[0] (including the latest supplements [1]) with "newly available" full octants palette could be neat to get sub-character "octant pixel" precision. (And/or exploitation of Braille [2] for the same purpose.) (Not a Mac user, so cannot try, and not clear from screenshots for me; these all seem like ASCII + ) [0] https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_1FB00.html https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_1FB00.html [1] https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_1CC00.html https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_1CC00.html [2] https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_2800.html https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_2800.html
- linhns 1y agoAny chance for web version?
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoVery nice product! In the retro computing world, the use of "ASCII" to construct levels and worlds is quite prevalent. I immediately considered whether Monodraw might be used as a kind of level editor in that context. Would you consider adding an '8-bit character bitmap' mode, which allows for the bitmap to also be edited? With such a feature, Monodraw would become immediately applicable to those of us building retro games for older platforms where this technique is used rather extensively to produce compelling art-work. For context, here is an example game which uses plain ol' ASCII chars to deliver some fun Moon Buggy action: https://www.oric.org/software/ascii_moon_buggy-2500.html https://www.oric.org/software/ascii_moon_buggy-2500.html The same technique is used here, albeit with redefined character sets, to implement a Scuba Dive adventure: https://www.oric.org/software/scuba_dive-89.html https://www.oric.org/software/scuba_dive-89.html
- milen 1y agoThank you for the kind words! > Would you consider adding an '8-bit character bitmap' mode, which allows for the bitmap to also be edited? Can you clarify with an example? Monodraw supports "surfaces" which are just like bitmaps - you can use the Pencil tool and draw on those surfaces with any characters you want (there's a palette in the inspector), just like a bitmap editor.
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoI guess we might be describing the same thing, and I am yet to have time to download and play with Monodraw (IT policies), but if there is indeed a way that surfaces could be replaced at a pixel level, so that for example the 'A' character becomes a Pacman, then we'd be aligned. The only issue is, are these surfaces 8x8 or similar, and would it be possible to load in a 6x8 bitmap, for those unusual 8-bit computers of the era which used them .. I refer to my favourite system of the period, the Oric Atmos, which graphics techniques are described here: https://osdk.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART9 https://osdk.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART9 (EDIT: details on the charset feature, which would be 'nice to have' in Monodraw, here: https://osdk.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART9#title11 https://osdk.org/index.php?page=articles&ref=ART9#title11) IF I can edit the bitmap and render as 6x8 characters, Monodraw would be immediately useful for level design. In any case, when I have access to a non-work computer, I hope to spend some time digging in and informing myself, so apologies if none of this is relevant ..
- gardenhedge 1y agoWas this to scratch your own itch or who needs this?
- milen 1y agoYeah, it was. After I finished working on the iOS app I was previously involved with, I needed to either find a job or make another app. I was browsing StackOverflow and saw some cool looking ASCII diagrams, thinking to myself "How can I make these easily on macOS?". So that's how the idea was born. I then spent about 1.5yrs from the initial commit until v1 release. Unfortunately, the financials didn't work out, so I had to find a job eventually. But I'm still maintaining the app and do have longer term plans when my job situation changes. [1] https://milen.me/software/clear-iphone-walkthrough/ https://milen.me/software/clear-iphone-walkthrough/
- alxndr13 1y agoyou were involved with clear? damn! i was one of the first users back then, even using it to this day! monodraw looks awesome, will definitely check it out!
- milen 1y agoOh, wow - so happy to hear from a Clear user! I was one of the co-creators of Clear and the developer who built the iOS app. It was co-created by me, Realmac and Impending. I had previously interned at Realmac and had been friends with the founder, Dan (they acquired another app of ours - EventBox, which later got rebranded as Socialite).
- MontagFTB 1y agoAs a years-long user of both Monodraw and Clear: thank you for making software that is opinionated and focused on what it wants to do.
- milen 1y agoThank you for the appreciation!
- jzs 1y agoOuch! It looks very sweet i must say. Having worked on a similar idea for a while as a side project, it does hurt to see something better coming out. I hope we can one day compete. :) Edit: removed the URL
- milen 1y agoGood luck with your project! The world is big enough for multiple products in the same space, no need to get discouraged.
- SirFatty 1y agoWindows version in the future?
- milen 1y agoThere are no current plans but never say never (the app is 100% AppKit, so porting means a full rewrite). I wish I had the time to port it to all three desktop OSes.
- SirFatty 1y agook.. web app? (not a programmer, so no idea if a web app is any different from a development standpoint)
- milen 1y agoTargeting Windows/Linux/web still means I cannot re-use the sources. But targeting web might be faster in terms of development time, although I don't have deep expertise on non-Apple platforms, so I cannot say for sure.
- criddell 1y agoTargeting the web will remove your giant advantage: native UI.
- thimabi 1y agoAgreed, but between having a web version and having the app stay exclusive to MacOS, I’d prefer the former.
- criddell 1y agoWhy? There are already all kinds of web sites that do this kind of thing. Monodraw's unique selling point is that it's a native Mac app that takes advantage of the Mac UI and it's done well so the UX is top notch. If you don't care about making the best possible app that you can, go ahead and do it in the browser. You will get something that's probably good enough and runs everywhere. But it's going to use more battery, more memory, and more bandwidth and not feel like a Mac app. Plus (IMHO) it's less fun to develop for the browser.
- shirol 1y ago> Monodraw does not use activation or any other form of DRM. We have complete trust in our customers. Interesting. But, why?
- dheera 1y agoPeople who pirate software at scale are not typically interested in ASCII art. It doesn't quite cross the threshold of business value and usefulness (e.g. SolidWorks, Photoshop) that would attract pirates.
- milen 1y agoAny time spent on copy protection is time not spent on improving the product for the paying customers. I find it unlikely that such copy protection would actually convert a non-paying user into a customer. I also don't want to make the software network dependent in any way.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago>I find it unlikely that such copy protection would actually convert a non-paying user into a customer. I used to think that but then kept tripping across customers who ran multiple copies of my software after purchasing a single license. I now wish I'd tightened the DRM from the start.
- awill 1y agoI think you're missing his point. If you tightened DRM, would those customers that ran multiple copies pay for multiple licenses? Fighting piracy is generally not worth it. Those people would never pay, so you're fighting to stop a pirate from using it, not to get them to pay. There's a big difference.
- elcapitan 1y agoReally neat, great work! Would it be possible to export to text with escape sequences for the colors?
- bayindirh 1y agoHi Milen. I love the app, please keep up the good work. It's perfect as is (at least for me). Thanks for all the text ;)
- milen 1y agoThank you!