5 ms·

Hey guys, I'm the developer of the app - glad to see it appear on HN. I'm working on it as we speak, so that we can ship the beta out ASAP. If anyone has any q

by milen 12y ago

Hey guys, I'm the developer of the app - glad to see it appear on HN. I'm working on it as we speak, so that we can ship the beta out ASAP. If anyone has any questions, just shoot - happy to answers :) Thanks!

samatman 12y ago
Will you be supporting ANSI / VT100 escape codes?
- milen 12y ago
  Possibly, depending on user demand. The first beta build will not have support for ANSI, though. In general, the best way to have your voice heard would be to drop us an email, so that we can have at least some quantified data - thanks.
vxNsr 12y ago
Did you intentionally do this? or is it a response to strange white spacing in chrome? http://i.imgur.com/VE2JT1N.png http://i.imgur.com/VE2JT1N.png I'm on Win8.1, Chrome (latest stable), 1366x768
- milen 12y ago
  Apologies that the robot didn't render correctly in your browser - here's how it should look http://imgur.com/pst21UO http://imgur.com/pst21UO I believe this is caused by the font used to render it, which is not a monospaced. We'll investigate it first thing tomorrow morning and make sure it works on all platforms / browsers. Sorry about that - thanks for letting me know :/
  - blahedo 12y ago
    I also have a (yet different) version of the robot rendered in my browser (Firefox on Ubuntu). I'm sure it is due to the font, which is monospaced but which probably doesn't include all the Unicode code points that you are using in your image. Which is one of the weaknesses of using Unicode characters in "ASCII" art---anything outside ASCII itself risks being missing in monospace fonts. Some of it is pretty well guaranteed (like the DOS-pedigreed box-drawing characters), but a lot of that is going to vary from system to system to system depending on just what fonts are installed. Perhaps you could have an option to render only a common subset of characters? Otherwise the central premise of the tool is substantially undermined. EDIT: To illustrate (and maybe help debug), the version on mine looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/WI4eRLo.png http://i.imgur.com/WI4eRLo.png
alexruf 12y ago
Looks really promising. Do you already know what the price of the application will be once it's finished?
- milen 12y ago
  No, we haven't settled on a price yet (I don't know what it should be). If you have any thoughts on the subject, I'm all ears :) Our top priority currently is to create tool that we're proud of and which ours users love. The financial side is only secondary (although very important). When we get close to releasing v1, we'll put more thought into it. The beta will be free to use for everyone (and that should last quite a while). The development of Monodraw will be very open from now on, I'll be writing about my thought process about all aspects, if you're interested make sure you follow our blog.
  - jaysonelliot 12y ago
    Pricing will of course depend on the size of your userbase and what you feel you need to fairly compensate the dev work put into this, but I can give you my feedback as a consumer. If the price point were about $19 or less, I'd think about it, maybe play with it a bit, and probably buy it without too much hesitation if it worked well. At $9.95, it would be an impulse buy that I might not even bother to properly evaluate first, just because it's so useful and looks so good. (I know I should try before I buy, but I'm being honest about my purchase behavior) If it were higher-priced, in the $39-$89 range, I'd think very carefully about why exactly I needed it, and probably make due without unless there was a very compelling case I could make for it. Any higher than that, especially getting into three figures, and I wouldn't buy at all.
dylanrw 12y ago
Impressive, nice work!
plicense 12y ago
Can't wait to get my hands on it. How long before Beta comes out?
- milen 12y ago
  I don't want to give any estimates as they would just be broken, lead to user disappointment and put unnecessary pressure on us. But I can tell you that from the bits that we have left, none of them require any internal architectural changes and it's mostly just implementing missing bits and pieces. We have two major improvements that are left to be implemented (I'm in the middle of the first one) and the rest are minor. For example, document zoom is trivial to implement (practically, it involves putting some UI controls and some small bits of code to tie loose ends). I'll be very open about the development process and try to keep everyone informed as much as possible. My advice would be to follow @Monodraw, our blog and/or myself (@milend).
mattfrommars 12y ago
Why Mac and not Linux/Windows.
- milen 12y ago
  So, there are two related questions on that subject. 1) Why Mac? Because I'm an Mac / iOS developer and I know Cocoa. I have no experience programming for Windows (e.g., MFC, WinForms, WPF) nor Linux (GTK+ / Qt - I dabbled a bit many years ago but that's about it). 2) Why not use a cross-platform toolkit? Fundamentally, a cross-platform app is at odds with our core value - providing the best user experience. In practical terms, this means we have to use the native toolkit for the platform. While it is true that you can use a cross-platform toolkit, the experience will never be as good as it can be. Moreover, not only do I lack experience with such toolkits, if we want to make a cross-platform app, we would want it to feel native on all major OSs. This involves an incredible amount of work and resources that we do not have. It all boils down to the fact that we want to make the best app for the platform that we have experience with. Hope that clarifies the reason why it's Mac-only.

by milen 12y ago

samatman 12y ago

Will you be supporting ANSI / VT100 escape codes?

milen 12y ago
Possibly, depending on user demand. The first beta build will not have support for ANSI, though. In general, the best way to have your voice heard would be to drop us an email, so that we can have at least some quantified data - thanks.

vxNsr 12y ago

Did you intentionally do this? or is it a response to strange white spacing in chrome? http://i.imgur.com/VE2JT1N.png http://i.imgur.com/VE2JT1N.png I'm on Win8.1, Chrome (latest stable), 1366x768

milen 12y ago
Apologies that the robot didn't render correctly in your browser - here's how it should look http://imgur.com/pst21UO http://imgur.com/pst21UO I believe this is caused by the font used to render it, which is not a monospaced. We'll investigate it first thing tomorrow morning and make sure it works on all platforms / browsers. Sorry about that - thanks for letting me know :/
- blahedo 12y ago
  I also have a (yet different) version of the robot rendered in my browser (Firefox on Ubuntu). I'm sure it is due to the font, which is monospaced but which probably doesn't include all the Unicode code points that you are using in your image. Which is one of the weaknesses of using Unicode characters in "ASCII" art---anything outside ASCII itself risks being missing in monospace fonts. Some of it is pretty well guaranteed (like the DOS-pedigreed box-drawing characters), but a lot of that is going to vary from system to system to system depending on just what fonts are installed. Perhaps you could have an option to render only a common subset of characters? Otherwise the central premise of the tool is substantially undermined. EDIT: To illustrate (and maybe help debug), the version on mine looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/WI4eRLo.png http://i.imgur.com/WI4eRLo.png

alexruf 12y ago

Looks really promising. Do you already know what the price of the application will be once it's finished?

milen 12y ago
No, we haven't settled on a price yet (I don't know what it should be). If you have any thoughts on the subject, I'm all ears :) Our top priority currently is to create tool that we're proud of and which ours users love. The financial side is only secondary (although very important). When we get close to releasing v1, we'll put more thought into it. The beta will be free to use for everyone (and that should last quite a while). The development of Monodraw will be very open from now on, I'll be writing about my thought process about all aspects, if you're interested make sure you follow our blog.
- jaysonelliot 12y ago
  Pricing will of course depend on the size of your userbase and what you feel you need to fairly compensate the dev work put into this, but I can give you my feedback as a consumer. If the price point were about $19 or less, I'd think about it, maybe play with it a bit, and probably buy it without too much hesitation if it worked well. At $9.95, it would be an impulse buy that I might not even bother to properly evaluate first, just because it's so useful and looks so good. (I know I should try before I buy, but I'm being honest about my purchase behavior) If it were higher-priced, in the $39-$89 range, I'd think very carefully about why exactly I needed it, and probably make due without unless there was a very compelling case I could make for it. Any higher than that, especially getting into three figures, and I wouldn't buy at all.

dylanrw 12y ago

Impressive, nice work!

plicense 12y ago

Can't wait to get my hands on it. How long before Beta comes out?

milen 12y ago
I don't want to give any estimates as they would just be broken, lead to user disappointment and put unnecessary pressure on us. But I can tell you that from the bits that we have left, none of them require any internal architectural changes and it's mostly just implementing missing bits and pieces. We have two major improvements that are left to be implemented (I'm in the middle of the first one) and the rest are minor. For example, document zoom is trivial to implement (practically, it involves putting some UI controls and some small bits of code to tie loose ends). I'll be very open about the development process and try to keep everyone informed as much as possible. My advice would be to follow @Monodraw, our blog and/or myself (@milend).

mattfrommars 12y ago

Why Mac and not Linux/Windows.

milen 12y ago
So, there are two related questions on that subject. 1) Why Mac? Because I'm an Mac / iOS developer and I know Cocoa. I have no experience programming for Windows (e.g., MFC, WinForms, WPF) nor Linux (GTK+ / Qt - I dabbled a bit many years ago but that's about it). 2) Why not use a cross-platform toolkit? Fundamentally, a cross-platform app is at odds with our core value - providing the best user experience. In practical terms, this means we have to use the native toolkit for the platform. While it is true that you can use a cross-platform toolkit, the experience will never be as good as it can be. Moreover, not only do I lack experience with such toolkits, if we want to make a cross-platform app, we would want it to feel native on all major OSs. This involves an incredible amount of work and resources that we do not have. It all boils down to the fact that we want to make the best app for the platform that we have experience with. Hope that clarifies the reason why it's Mac-only.