elk
d2
elk | d2 | |
---|---|---|
3 | 92 | |
232 | 15,867 | |
2.6% | 1.5% | |
8.0 | 9.7 | |
7 days ago | 6 days ago | |
Java | Go | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later | Mozilla Public License 2.0 |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
elk
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How to draw beautiful software architecture diagrams
Graphviz is the classic option but unfortunately it isn't very good. I mean it was great when it was written in the 80s or whatever but then it seems like it was declared "done" and is still stuck in the 80s.
Quite annoying because it totally dominates the mindshare of graph layout tools, making it difficult to find alternatives.
Here's some other options anyway:
* Eclipse Layout Kernel: https://github.com/eclipse/elk
* OGDF: https://ogdf.uos.de/
In fairness both their websites are pretty terrible (would some examples kill you OGDF?) and they don't provide an easy way to try them out, so I guess it's not that surprising that Graphviz dominates.
Anyway in practice if you have a complex graph then doing it manually is by far the best option.
If it's too big to do manually then it's unlikely to be a useful graph in the first place.
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Show HN: Databasediagram.com – Private, Text to Entity-Relationship Diagram Tool
The issue I have with a lot of these tools is they work fine when depicting relationships between tables in the same schema (talking mainly about PostgreSQL databases), but few support showing relationships between tables across different schemas.
Also, when the number of tables grows large, few have layouts arranged in an optimal way. I use D2 (https://d2lang.com/) to create ERDs. However, of the free layout engines available in D2, Dagre (https://github.com/dagrejs/dagre) and ELK (https://github.com/eclipse/elk) both don't have optimal placement of layouts for a sufficiently complicated database.
- How to Draw S-Curved Arrows Between Boxes
d2
- NMAP-formatter: convert NMAP results to HTML, CSV, JSON, graphviz (dot), SQLite
- Penrose – Penrose
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Pikchr: A PIC-like markup language for diagrams in technical documentation
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/
- Ask HN: How do you build diagrams for the web?
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Documentation as Code for Cloud - C4 Model & Structurizr
In the next post I'll deep-dive into the D2 language which also has a huge set of features. Stay tuned.
- Inkscape Cloud Architect
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Nomnoml
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/
- Software Architecture Tools
- D2: Declarative Diagramming
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Architecture diagrams enable better conversations
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.
What are some alternatives?
GraphvizOnline - Let's Graphviz it online
mermaid - Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text in a similar manner as markdown
dagre - Directed graph layout for JavaScript
C4-PlantUML - C4-PlantUML combines the benefits of PlantUML and the C4 model for providing a simple way of describing and communicate software architectures
red5-server - Red5 Server core
d3 - Bring data to life with SVG, Canvas and HTML. :bar_chart::chart_with_upwards_trend::tada:
jQuery-menu-aim - jQuery plugin to fire events when user's cursor aims at particular dropdown menu items. For making responsive mega dropdowns like Amazon's.
Mermaid - Edit, preview and share mermaid charts/diagrams. New implementation of the live editor.
excalidraw-collaboration - excalidraw with collaboration feature, self-hosting, and only one-click deploy
diagrams - :art: Diagram as Code for prototyping cloud system architectures
Jetty - Eclipse Jetty® - Web Container & Clients - supports HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1, HTTP/1.0, websocket, servlets, and more
mermaid-cli - Command line tool for the Mermaid library