Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian

Posted by akopkesheshyan on Monday November 11, 2024 @09:03PM
from the show-hn dept.

https://github.com/akopdev/obsidian-textgrams

Obsidian plug-in that allows you to create and store ASCII diagrams in your notes. It can be used to visualise diagrams, flowcharts, complex tables, Gantt charts and more in technical documentation, that will be rendered as a nice SVG graphics.

( 7 comments | on HN )

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by 4b11b4 on Sunday November 17, 2024 @05:33PM (#42167972)

This is built on https://github.com/google/typograms, which is awesome.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by vunderba on Sunday November 17, 2024 @06:53PM (#42168429)

Nice. I mostly use mermaid which is built into obsidian, but I could definitely see this ascii representation being useful as well since even in the unrendered form (pre-svg transformation), it's still WYSIWYG.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by riidom on Sunday November 17, 2024 @07:27PM (#42168603)

Nice, but I never use the preview mode. The edit mode being 99% like the prevew mode is what I most like about Obsidian.

But then, I think all diagram extensions work on that basis.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by btreecat on Sunday November 17, 2024 @08:19PM (#42168867)

This is awesome! There are a few other text to diagram language out there, but this seems to support straight up drawing via text.

Very powerful given the flexibility.

I also dislike how fiddly it appears with whitespace and general verbosity to explicitly define paths between nodes and such.

Love seeing how the community continues to build on the idea of Obsidian.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by cfcfcf on Sunday November 17, 2024 @10:01PM (#42169357)

Nice. As a side note, I find that Claude 3.5 Sonnet is pretty good at drawing similar ASCII diagrams from prompts.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by dSebastien on Monday November 18, 2024 @02:11AM (#42170430)

I need to give this plugin a try, even though I already use too many

BTW here are my favorite plugins: https://www.dsebastien.net/2022-10-19-the-must-have-obsidian...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Store and render ASCII diagrams in Obsidian by submeta on Monday November 18, 2024 @03:01AM (#42170623)

I’ve always been a fan of ASCII diagrams—partly because I can ask tools like Claude or ChatGPT to generate them for me quickly. Lately, I’ve noticed that Claude even supports generating diagrams in Mermaid format.

Would love to see apps like Lucidchart or similar tools to generate diagrams directly from prompts. A sort of hybrid between visual diagramming and the simplicity of text-based input. It feels like the next natural step for diagramming tools to embrace AI integration like this.

[ Parent | on HN ]