While Monodraw seems to have business related features I feel the need to mention "MÅ“bius ANSI Art Editor"[0] a cross platform open source alternative.
Moebius is a new ANSI and ASCII Editor for MacOS, Windows, and Linux.
With a neat Moebius Server feature that allows collaboration by multiple users on the same canvas through a server instance.
I learned about Monodraw from Thorsten Ball’s interpreter / compiler books. The book has really beautiful illustrations and ASCII drawings, when I asked the author they directed me to Monodraw
Here is a sample chapter from the book (in PDF) - https://compilerbook.com/sample.pdf
What an amazingly polished app! It's refreshing to see a new app feel perfectly at home on macOS. $10 to support these folks is worth it.
FYI, Emacs bundles w/ the package `artist-mode` that seems to have equivalent functionality, you can even draw w/ the mouse.
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDbi56U5qRw&ab_channel=gnuma...
ASCIIFlow is a less full featured web app with similar functionality to Monodraw, for all the windows/linux/chromebook users wishing for an electron version
This is why I love the Mac. Even obscure apps have a beautiful interface and easy to use web site. I know this is incendiary, but I must say it: on Windows, this app's site would have seven giant, fake download buttons, the actual download would play an ad, and the app would look like something from a fever dream.
FWIW, this looks like a follow up to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27831789 (Svgbob – Create a graphical representation of text diagrams)
Some past threads:
Show HN: Monodraw, an ASCII Art Editor for Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9545252 - May 2015 (53 comments)
Monodraw: Powerful ASCII Art Editor for Developers (Mac) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145945 - March 2015 (3 comments)
Show HN: Monodraw for Mac, ASCII Art Editor – Beta Available - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9138039 - March 2015 (11 comments)
ASCII art editor designed for the Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8445087 - Oct 2014 (107 comments)
Unfortunately in minimal maintenance mode for the last 3 years. https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance-mode/
Still works well though.
I have a small tutorial on how to create kind of responsive elements in Monodraw: https://trusz.github.io/posts/monodraw-tips-anchors/
I’m the author of Monodraw, happy to answer any questions.
What a relief it is to see a snappy, lightweight native app.
Remember, when embedding ASCII art in HTML, hide it from screenreaders and provide alt text. Otherwise it's an incomprehensible mess of seemingly random characters.
Does it have layers like in photoshop? Or does the group functionality let you overlay and then move the group away without ruining the underlying drawing?
Looks absolutely amazing.. I wish there was a Linux version.
If you're interested in this, I'd encourage you to look at MarkDeep (https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/).
This allows you to write Markdown-style documents, including ASCII-art diagrams, but which render beautifully in any browser with JavaScript. Using Monodraw or ASCIIFlow as the front-end editor, you can drop most results in a Markdeep document. Bonus: good inline math typesetting plus loads of other awesome document features.
I've always liked ascii flow https://asciiflow.com
But actually more often I've needed things like https://github.com/weidagang/text-diagram as it is much easier to maintain
But I actually need more types of diagrams, so slowly, as one of many little side projects, I've been building a little library for all kinds of ascii diagram generation
This really is excellent. I can see a lot more sequence diagrams and illustrations getting into my code comments in future. Well worth $10.
This looks pretty cool, though unfortunately I'm not near my Mac so I can't really check it out. I'd be interested to know how its freehand pencil tool compares to JavE's (http://www.jave.de/). I always thought that was the coolest feature of JavE.
What's the purpose of being able to embed an image in the sheet? Is it intended to be an aid to `tracing' an image when creating ASCII art, or does it have some other purpose?
I need this so much... I have to use Lucid Charts in Confluence...
This could have been OmniGraffle's April Fools'.
This looks really cool, and I'd totally buy this if it had a windows version. I don't a mac, nor do I really want one.
Can it use other Unicode character drawing glyphs? We now have PETSCII, ATASCII, 2x3 mosaics...
Similar:
git://bitreich.org/gramscii
Ah, good ol' ambiguous-width box drawing characters. They are not ASCII and their width is not prescribed by the Unicode standard and mostly determined by domestic conventions. Stick to ASCII drawing for the maximal portability.
Long time Monodraw user here as well. While I still use it quite often for README.md docs, excalidraw has replaced most of the use cases I had, along with having a much nicer and upbeat feel (something I'm generally after when writing boring technical docs).
Anyway Monodraw is just awesome in its own way, and I really like the easy way you can draw stuff in it, ASCII is so restricting it simplifies design decisions for us art plebs quite a bit. I just wish there could be a way to export it as a xkcd / excalidraw style PNG after you've done drawing.
Love the Sketch-style feel.
This looks really cool. Well done! And no electron. Will definitely try it out
Well done, This is amazing app.
Long-time user here. Laying out newsletters, flow charts, diagrams, and figlets. It has very few issues these days, and only a couple minor points of frustration in the UI. For my purposes, it's the best thing out there.
A couple of workflow tips for using Monodraw:
* Open a few docs in Monodraw at a time and leave them open for your different needs: text boxes, figlets, diagrams. Each with a few elements already waiting to be filled, cut & pasted, etc.
* For larger docs (e.g. newsletters) finish the writing in your text editor and bring it into Monodraw. Think Publisher or InDesign. Yeah, you can edit in here, but it's weird. Best for layout.
* Browse the sample file that opens by default when you load Monodraw. Good fodder in there.
* Snippets!
* Yes, it is just text but there is FILL to give order (front to back) of elements. This is really handy for making slides that expose a list one item at a time.
* Cut and Paste chunks in and out of your Monodraw file with your main document or take a clipped screen capture for dropping into a graphic or fancy format document (e.g. Illustrator). No need to export and paste.