d2 VS d2-playground

While not embedded in markdown, I like d2 [1]. I can use it with org-babel to embed and view the diagrams on emacs. After using graphviz for years, the visual output seems more polished to me. With that said, I want to give pikchr a try.

[1]:https://d2lang.com/

In the next post I'll deep-dive into the D2 language which also has a huge set of features. Stay tuned.

That site is created by the maintainers of D2[1], so it might be biased, but I still think D2 has the friendliest syntax of the bunch, including nomnoml.

[1]: https://d2lang.com/

I've been using https://structurizr.com/ to automatically generate C4 diagrams from a model (rather than drawing them by hand). It works well with the approach for written documentation as proposed in https://arc42.org/. It's very easy to embed a C4 diagram into a markdown document.

The result is a set of documents and diagrams under version control that can be rendered using the structurizr documentation server (for interactive diagrams and indexed search).

I also use https://d2lang.com/ for declarative diagrams in addition to C4, e.g., sequence diagrams and https://adr.github.io/ for architectural decision records. These are also well integrated into structurizr.

https://play.d2lang.com/?script=qlDQtVOo5AIEAAD__w%3D%3D&ske...

I was going to ask why you don't have a web version but you already do. I'm going to play with this more today.

Have you thought about an "auto compile"/live mode where it changes as you edit the text? I think this adds a level of intuitiveness that would help new users explore.

Wow that's a very detailed catch, thanks for reporting! Made an issue: https://github.com/terrastruct/d2-playground/issues/33

A video can be a lot of work, it is quite challenging to produce a satisfying result. Instead, I suggest you to draw (here is a nice online tool to do that. If you prefer plain text, you can use d2) a Flowchart to represent your workflow. For someone who wants to understand a use case, it will be much quicker to look at a diagram rather than read or watch a video. And it will be easier for you to produce it.

We'll have our own API available for you to do this too. So you can make something on playground (https://play.d2lang.com) and then render the same way. E.g. https://github.com/alixander/test-render/blob/main/README.md

if you're talking about the playground, I did the initial version in a weekend or so (https://github.com/terrastruct/d2-playground), which includes building a WASM version of D2 (written in Go), putting a text editor, some UI stuff like dropdowns/menu, hooking it up together, layouts and responsiveness whatnot.

If you're talking about D2 language itself, ~2 devs over 3/4 of a year.

You can give it a spin to see if it's a fit for you here: https://play.d2lang.com