7 ms·

That seems pretty great, but I always have the problem of creating the ASCII art in the first place. Is there a tool to help with that?

by vihren 7y ago

humblebee 7y ago
For general chart drawing (box, lines, arrows, text) I've used asciiflow[0] a few times. [0] http://asciiflow.com/ http://asciiflow.com/
- KingOfCoders 7y ago
  I can second that. It also supports import which I then use to update documentation.
jsrjenkins 7y ago
The best I've found is emacs picture-mode. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Basic-Picture.html#Basic-Picture https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ba... Here is a good summary: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_ascii_diagram.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_ascii_diagram.html
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  I love how after all these years I can still find out random new things about emacs I didn't know. It's a treasure trove of capabilities.
inferiorhuman 7y ago
I really liked monodraw but am reluctant to pay for a license now that it's more or less been abandoned. I still like it, but only bought a copy for work at megacorp and foolishly didn't put it in my name.
- patrec 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand this attitude. It's a pitty it failed commercially. But it's a great app that only costs a tenner and works well (probably way better than any available alternative). And it can "save" as text, so it's not like you're going to lose all your work. Surely, a good investment for anyone above minimum wage who does ascii art periodically on a mac?
- dewey 7y ago
  What makes you think it's abandoned? The author is active on Twitter, the last update for dark mode was in May 2019 and I don't see any show stopper bugs or crashes on Catalina. Small utilities like this don't need an update every month. I bought it a while ago because 1) It's very cheap and a great show case for a small niche Mac app that's both beautiful and works well 2) The two times per year I use it, it's already worth it and fun to play around with. https://blog.helftone.com https://blog.helftone.com
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    What makes you think it's abandoned? The last blog entry I saw was that it's been put into maintenance mode. If your interest has fizzled but you still want to keep the product out there, that's a great use case for open source. I'm just not that inclined to pay for something that's not being actively developed. Obviously at some point last year it got a new feature (yay). That speaks to the app itself being feature incomplete.
mbar84 7y ago
Shameless plug: https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/ https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/
patrec 7y ago
If you're on a mac, try monodraw. It's discontinued, but it's cheap and works great (it's basically a full featured diagramming app – with text output).
vanderZwan 7y ago
The website itself is an interactive editor, for what that's worth

That seems pretty great, but I always have the problem of creating the ASCII art in the first place. Is there a tool to help with that?

by vihren 7y ago

That seems pretty great, but I always have the problem of creating the ASCII art in the first place. Is there a tool to help with that?

humblebee 7y ago

For general chart drawing (box, lines, arrows, text) I've used asciiflow[0] a few times. [0] http://asciiflow.com/ http://asciiflow.com/

KingOfCoders 7y ago
I can second that. It also supports import which I then use to update documentation.

jsrjenkins 7y ago

The best I've found is emacs picture-mode. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Basic-Picture.html#Basic-Picture https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ba... Here is a good summary: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_ascii_diagram.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_ascii_diagram.html

arminiusreturns 7y ago
I love how after all these years I can still find out random new things about emacs I didn't know. It's a treasure trove of capabilities.

inferiorhuman 7y ago

I really liked monodraw but am reluctant to pay for a license now that it's more or less been abandoned. I still like it, but only bought a copy for work at megacorp and foolishly didn't put it in my name.

patrec 7y ago
I'm not sure I understand this attitude. It's a pitty it failed commercially. But it's a great app that only costs a tenner and works well (probably way better than any available alternative). And it can "save" as text, so it's not like you're going to lose all your work. Surely, a good investment for anyone above minimum wage who does ascii art periodically on a mac?
dewey 7y ago
What makes you think it's abandoned? The author is active on Twitter, the last update for dark mode was in May 2019 and I don't see any show stopper bugs or crashes on Catalina. Small utilities like this don't need an update every month. I bought it a while ago because 1) It's very cheap and a great show case for a small niche Mac app that's both beautiful and works well 2) The two times per year I use it, it's already worth it and fun to play around with. https://blog.helftone.com https://blog.helftone.com
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  What makes you think it's abandoned? The last blog entry I saw was that it's been put into maintenance mode. If your interest has fizzled but you still want to keep the product out there, that's a great use case for open source. I'm just not that inclined to pay for something that's not being actively developed. Obviously at some point last year it got a new feature (yay). That speaks to the app itself being feature incomplete.

mbar84 7y ago

Shameless plug: https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/ https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/

patrec 7y ago

If you're on a mac, try monodraw. It's discontinued, but it's cheap and works great (it's basically a full featured diagramming app – with text output).

vanderZwan 7y ago

The website itself is an interactive editor, for what that's worth