mdbook-mermaid VS draw.io

Flow chart, sequence and class diagrams are the ones I use the most in my current job.

In source, I generally use Mermaid[1] as its syntax is easily maintainable and understandable. As our documentation (mdBook) is written in markdown and can render Mermaid via a plugin[2].

When drawing quick diagrams during online communications, I use Excalidraw[3] as it's easy to use and has a nice whiteboard style to it. When I'm with my team (pre-covid), whiteboard or paper did the trick.

[1]: https://mermaid-js.github.io/ [2]: https://github.com/badboy/mdbook-mermaid [3]: https://excalidraw.com/

At first I thought this was drawio: https://www.drawio.com/ with which you can generate a schema diagram from SQL. Is this the other way around.

For anyone who is willing to use a webapp, I like drawio[0]. You can download locally[1] and self host (I just use the python webserver).

While finding the Github, I see they now actually package an Electron application, so that is probably worth exploring[2].

[0] https://www.drawio.com/

[1] https://github.com/jgraph/drawio

[2] https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop

draw.io works nicely for flowcharts and other types of diagrams.

:

  The source code authored by us in this repo is

Another way that you can leverage the power of ChatGPT and mermaid is when you are using a software designing tool such as Draw.io and you want to skip the tedious task of creating a diagram from scratch and want to get a push at the begging and save your time for the creative part of the diagram.

There are also mockups with more features, so ignore weird UI at first.

[1]: https://www.drawio.com

> Additional minified JavaScript files and Java libraries are used in this project. All of the licenses are deemed compatible with the Apache 2.0, nothing is GPL or AGPL, due dilgence is performed on all third-party code.

Here's an issue that was opened:

https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues/3782

> The file for converting the mermaid code to mxgaph xml is available only in minified version. the unminified version "mermaid2drawio.js" is missing. Please include that.

Answer:

> We do not supply the source to that file.

With such phrasing, for now, I'll consider drawio proprietary with some parts in Apache 2 (even if it's actually the majority of the code).

It might be possible to have a fork with some optional features related to these non provided files removed, if by luck no critical feature is impacted.

Specifically I've been working on an incremental game and I've been using https://www.drawio.com/ to help me plan out what I want the progression of features/unlocks to be as the player progresses through the game, what pre-requirements/events are for each feature/unlock, etc.