and
https://meatfighter.com/ascii-silhouettify/
to create input text for TerminalTextEffects to create terminal animations like the following:
https://chrisbuilds.github.io/terminaltexteffects/img/change...
I'd love some scripting features, to create and edit designs through code. But I'm aware my use case is a little niche.
I'm a huge fan, and am surprised how stable Monodraw has been for me. I've kept a single, growing document open as a scratch pad for the last three years. The only downtime was converting it to the new-ish file format haha.
I really care about stability and performance, so I’m happy to hear that it’s being appreciated.
In the retro computing world, the use of "ASCII" to construct levels and worlds is quite prevalent.
I immediately considered whether Monodraw might be used as a kind of level editor in that context.
Would you consider adding an '8-bit character bitmap' mode, which allows for the bitmap to also be edited?
With such a feature, Monodraw would become immediately applicable to those of us building retro games for older platforms where this technique is used rather extensively to produce compelling art-work.
For context, here is an example game which uses plain ol' ASCII chars to deliver some fun Moon Buggy action:
https://www.oric.org/software/ascii_moon_buggy-2500.html
The same technique is used here, albeit with redefined character sets, to implement a Scuba Dive adventure:
> Would you consider adding an '8-bit character bitmap' mode, which allows for the bitmap to also be edited?
Can you clarify with an example? Monodraw supports "surfaces" which are just like bitmaps - you can use the Pencil tool and draw on those surfaces with any characters you want (there's a palette in the inspector), just like a bitmap editor.
I immediately hate that when intending to scroll vertically using the trackpad on my macbook, it constantly unintentionally scrolls horizontally as well and I have to correct it. It is particularly irritating since there is no content on the canvas to see when scrolling.
Maybe I'm just super accustomed to browser scrolling behaviors, which snap scrolling based on initial direction.
I'm mostly posting this because its the kind of papercut that might be forgotten over time.
Once I started using it for actual diagrams, the issue completely faded away. Scrolling a super long vertical-only document is an unimportant edge case.
This is the god damn holy grail of ascii chart editing.
Well done.
(Not a Mac user, so cannot try, and not clear from screenshots for me; these all seem like ASCII + )
[0] https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_1FB00.html [1] https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_1CC00.html [2] https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/c_2800.html
Bravo.
I wish I had the time to port it to all three desktop OSes.
Would it be possible to export to text with escape sequences for the colors?
> Harness the Power and Simplicity of Plain Text
Nice tagline, but surely it's not just plain text. It's some unicode shenanigans. How does one make sure their console can display all the necessary characters? How does one make sure others can see their creation?
Interesting. But, why?
I find it unlikely that such copy protection would actually convert a non-paying user into a customer.
I also don't want to make the software network dependent in any way.
Companies participating in that transformation don't get my money and I'm glad to know that this isn't one of them.
I love the app, please keep up the good work. It's perfect as is (at least for me).
Thanks for all the text ;)
Was going to politely ask for full dark mode but just noticed from your blog that it seems to be on the way?
Does it support the new 3x2 and 4x2 mosaic characters (and the HP big 3x3 cell letters) from recent Unicode specs?
I was browsing StackOverflow and saw some cool looking ASCII diagrams, thinking to myself "How can I make these easily on macOS?". So that's how the idea was born.
I then spent about 1.5yrs from the initial commit until v1 release. Unfortunately, the financials didn't work out, so I had to find a job eventually.
But I'm still maintaining the app and do have longer term plans when my job situation changes.
I hope we can one day compete. :)
Edit: removed the URL
https://web.archive.org/web/20210503172024/https://fatiherik...
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/app/nonoverse-nonogram-puzzles/id6748...
the fact i can export to clipboard and re-import it and reconstruct all the shapes etc. almost flawlessly is such a big win.
Job Lifecycle: https://hexdocs.pm/oban/job_lifecycle.html
Composition: https://oban.pro/docs/pro/1.6.4/composition.html
It's an issue I'm seeing even for comments touching too much on algorithmic stuff. To take a somewhat common example, if you were dealing with a credit card payment flow, where would the explanation of how a transaction goes through a few states asynchronously, which all trigger a webhook callback ?
Obviously the people working on the code need to be aware of that, so documentation is somewhere needed. I've seen people put whole blocks in class headers, other sprinkle it all inside the code, personally I ended up moving it outside of the code. Where would you put it?
same lol. here is a blog post of mine where I used them - https://avi.im/blag/2024/disaggregated-storage
I had to convert them to images because I couldn't get to working with Hugo, static site generator
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433417 - oct 09 2014
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9545252 - may 14 2015
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27832910 - july 14 2021
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32134469 - july 18 2022
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39651796 - march 9 2024
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037904 - 1 year ago
and the some
all of these gained interest, so my conclusion is Monodraw benefits a lot from being regularly exposed to HN crowd.
Monodraw - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39651796 - March 2024 (200 comments)
Monodraw – a non-subscription, powerful ASCII art editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32134469 - July 2022 (36 comments)
Monodraw: ASCII art editor for the Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27832910 - July 2021 (102 comments)
Monodraw – macOS ASCII art editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778326 - July 2021 (3 comments)
Monodraw – Powerful ASCII art editor designed for the Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734212 - Nov 2017 (1 comment)
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)
Looks great, and also love the perpetual license for $9.99 rather than the host of subscription services, i'll probably end up buying it just to support good practices.
That word is a red flag for me — wondering what dark pattern is awaiting, finding myself digging for the fine print…
In the US, the First-Sale Doctrine won't apply to software (unlike tangible books and records) so you probably do not have the right to sell your copy of this software to another person.
Since that's not true ownership, I think it can only be described as a license.
But I'll agree that all sorts of shenanigans can, and often do, hide under that generic term. However, "buy" could suggest many substantial rights that are not on offer (most importantly distribution), so it's a bit of a quandary.
The phrase "Buy Now - $9.99, yours forever" might thread the needle. The sale page would still need to include all the legal terms, of course. I think "license" is a necessary word there.
Regardless, when you buy it, it's yours forever - no activation, no DRM, no subscription, no fine print.
(Monodraw developer here).
It's a great simple app I use for inline comment diagrams and more importantly server login banners.
I love to login to a server with a customized banner and a tagline. It's just a small joy makes work more fun.
Just checked and my most recent document is a diagram of data flows between two services.
Highly recommended.
Very nice.
There's a visual simplicity and legibility to the kind of straight-forward but slightly-decorated diagrams shown in the sample images. And the fact that I can now copy-paste them anywhere as well (rather than the classic "screenshot of a Miro or Paint.js board") is so cool.
role="img"
aria-label="A styled box using monospace box-drawing characters. Its header is 'area complete', and there's a link to a forum post."
how does this compare to asciiflow.com which is free and open-source?
asciiflow.com is great as well.
(Monodraw developer here)
I’m trying to figure out a way to organize thoughts with charts in a way that provides useful context to an LLM and also that an LLM could theoretically generate.
It's one of the better parts of literate programming without typesetting.
[1] https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1653 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31891226
Hiding a lot of complications in that phrase. What text encoding? What font? etc.
(I wonder if there is a Linux alternative? Closest thing I use is the drawing mode in emacs).
Same with ASCii- you could respect that it took some time to make it. What respect and feeling will there be for work in the future?
Everything generated or thought cheaply generated on whims. Everything throwaway.
Good art is good art. Focusing on the time spent making it is a poor substitution for the ability to critique the art itself.
Anyway, people made this same argument when image editors came into their own. There is a long, tiresome generational tradition of artists thinking the new crowd has it too easy and doesn't appreciate the grit that goes into making art in earlier mediums. We can do better.