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Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?

61 points ttd | 1 comments | 12 Mar 25 14:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source

I've been working on a diagramming tool [1] and wanted to get some thoughts from people who regularly make architecture and other technical diagrams. I know my own experiences but I'm quite curious to hear others.

I'm guessing for a lot of people draw.io and Excalidraw are probably the go-to. If you use draw.io (or something else), what do you like about it, or what do you wish was better?

[1] - https://app.vexlio.com/ for the curious

1. bitozoid ◴[15 Mar 25 07:35 UTC] No.43370737[source]▶
What I ask to a diagramming software:

- To be open source, or open specification/format.

- Easy eaditable (gui/tui/source), that is, primitives. I don't want to edit a text based diagram with a text editor (emacs artist mode).

- Free design features, so I have some control on the presentation.

- Render to text diagram as a first class feature, so it can be integrated in source code/control. From text rendering it can easily be converted to vectorial/raster.

- CLI to render.

- DSL, better with geometric (position, size) and styling features (color, bold face, ...).

I have found nothing that meets these criteria.

I'm actually using https://metacpan.org/pod/App::Asciio as the best approach.