4 ms·

Diagrams Through Ascii Art

52 points by fogus 17y ago

diN0bot 17y ago
the "why" section seems reasonable to me. particularly as a wiki macro. it still makes me say "ugg". making a diagram in text is like writing code in ed.
- keyist 17y ago
  There are many reasons to use text for diagrams: * universally editable forever * diffable version control * can be included with source code documentation/comments * full gamut of unix tools available: you can grep for labels, do regex replace with sed, etc * automation -- anything text-based is inherently scriptable
  - makmanalp 17y ago
    Especially diffable version control! Better than adding an image for code documentation. Although SVGs are also decent in this regard, they'd be slightly overkill.
davidw 17y ago
Hrm.... M-x artist-mode-render-buffer
ludwig 17y ago
Oh sweet! Now we just need emacs to render the ascii art when displaying it in a code comment, similar to what the AUCTeX latex-mode does for equations.
jcw 17y ago
Awesome. This is a great addition to the plaintext arsenal (which includes Markdown and Textile). I'd like to see a superfluous extension/hack of this to be able to produce art and cool-looking things in general, a la pixmaps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap
perezd 17y ago
this seems like it would take far more time than just purchasing a copy of omnigraffle and saving a file.
- gjm11 17y ago
  On the other hand, it might be easier and cheaper than purchasing a Mac and a copy of OmniGraffle. And you have to admit, it's a pretty lovely hack.
oofoe 17y ago
This guy has integrated it with org-mode for Emacs: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-13.1 http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-13.1
acgourley 17y ago
Neat, although I was hoping this was going to create ascii diagrams from a GUI editor. Edit: might be a good feature for this project
- gjm11 17y ago
  Emacs's artist-mode (mentioned in another of the comments here) offers something rather like that.
  - brianto2010 17y ago
    There is also an ASCII drawing tool for Vim, FWIW. http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40
deleted 17y ago
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52 points by fogus 17y ago

the "why" section seems reasonable to me. particularly as a wiki macro. it still makes me say "ugg". making a diagram in text is like writing code in ed.

keyist 17y ago
There are many reasons to use text for diagrams: * universally editable forever * diffable version control * can be included with source code documentation/comments * full gamut of unix tools available: you can grep for labels, do regex replace with sed, etc * automation -- anything text-based is inherently scriptable
- makmanalp 17y ago
  Especially diffable version control! Better than adding an image for code documentation. Although SVGs are also decent in this regard, they'd be slightly overkill.

davidw 17y ago

Hrm.... M-x artist-mode-render-buffer

ludwig 17y ago

Oh sweet! Now we just need emacs to render the ascii art when displaying it in a code comment, similar to what the AUCTeX latex-mode does for equations.

jcw 17y ago

Awesome. This is a great addition to the plaintext arsenal (which includes Markdown and Textile). I'd like to see a superfluous extension/hack of this to be able to produce art and cool-looking things in general, a la pixmaps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap

perezd 17y ago

this seems like it would take far more time than just purchasing a copy of omnigraffle and saving a file.

gjm11 17y ago
On the other hand, it might be easier and cheaper than purchasing a Mac and a copy of OmniGraffle. And you have to admit, it's a pretty lovely hack.

oofoe 17y ago

This guy has integrated it with org-mode for Emacs: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-13.1 http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#sec-13.1

acgourley 17y ago

Neat, although I was hoping this was going to create ascii diagrams from a GUI editor. Edit: might be a good feature for this project

gjm11 17y ago
Emacs's artist-mode (mentioned in another of the comments here) offers something rather like that.
- brianto2010 17y ago
  There is also an ASCII drawing tool for Vim, FWIW. http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]