from Hacker News

Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac

by keehun on 7/14/21, 1:44 PM with 102 comments

  • by ynac on 7/14/21, 3:47 PM

    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.

  • by oneweekwonder on 7/14/21, 4:47 PM

    While Monodraw seems to have business related features I feel the need to mention "Mœbius 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.

    [0]: https://blocktronics.github.io/moebius/

  • by avinassh on 7/14/21, 4:44 PM

    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

  • by jibbers on 7/14/21, 2:53 PM

    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.

  • by hcarvalhoalves on 7/14/21, 8:03 PM

    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...

  • by sharkjacobs on 7/14/21, 4:04 PM

    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

    https://asciiflow.com

  • by webwielder2 on 7/14/21, 7:58 PM

    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.

  • by dang on 7/14/21, 6:48 PM

    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)

  • by jshier on 7/14/21, 2:41 PM

    Unfortunately in minimal maintenance mode for the last 3 years. https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance-mode/

    Still works well though.

  • by trusz on 7/14/21, 8:20 PM

    I have a small tutorial on how to create kind of responsive elements in Monodraw: https://trusz.github.io/posts/monodraw-tips-anchors/

  • by milen on 7/14/21, 9:55 PM

    I’m the author of Monodraw, happy to answer any questions.

  • by eliseumds on 7/14/21, 3:37 PM

    What a relief it is to see a snappy, lightweight native app.

  • by stevenpetryk on 7/14/21, 6:56 PM

    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.

  • by fouc on 7/15/21, 1:12 AM

    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?

  • by sureglymop on 7/14/21, 3:35 PM

    Looks absolutely amazing.. I wish there was a Linux version.

  • by hollasch on 7/14/21, 9:29 PM

    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.

  • by keithnz on 7/14/21, 9:37 PM

    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

  • by spacedcowboy on 7/14/21, 3:58 PM

    This really is excellent. I can see a lot more sequence diagrams and illustrations getting into my code comments in future. Well worth $10.

  • by patorjk on 7/14/21, 2:39 PM

    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.

  • by ntrz on 7/14/21, 2:27 PM

    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?

  • by rbanffy on 7/14/21, 4:04 PM

    I need this so much... I have to use Lucid Charts in Confluence...

  • by pornel on 7/14/21, 10:29 PM

    This could have been OmniGraffle's April Fools'.

  • by Foomf on 7/14/21, 3:39 PM

    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.

  • by rbanffy on 7/14/21, 4:07 PM

    Can it use other Unicode character drawing glyphs? We now have PETSCII, ATASCII, 2x3 mosaics...

  • by anthk on 7/14/21, 8:42 PM

    Similar:

    git://bitreich.org/gramscii

  • by lifthrasiir on 7/15/21, 3:34 AM

    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.

  • by seer on 7/15/21, 6:43 AM

    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.

  • by andrewmcwatters on 7/15/21, 2:09 AM

    Love the Sketch-style feel.

  • by GekkePrutser on 7/14/21, 2:21 PM

    This looks really cool. Well done! And no electron. Will definitely try it out