depict VS ScrivanoForLinux

One potential solution direction, which you can try out via my own incomplete drawing toy [1] is to treat punctuation characters like SP (“ “), COMMA (“,”), and SEMICOLON (“;”) as markers for the product operations of a family of monoids that allow you to specify more and more complicated sequences without requiring the typist to “move the cursor left” to add a matching character.

This way, simple lists can be specified via juxtaposition:

a b c

And then more complex lists

thing 1, thing 2, thing 3

and still more complex lists like

A complex thing; with data, and more data

can be specified in a way that is potentially still human-legible and easily editable.

Combined with ~instant feedback while typing and, ideally, a “brushing” system to allow selection of parts of the textual model via the linked drawing, I am hopeful that this can be solved resiliently, at least for the most common use cases.

(Part of why I am excited about OP’s work here though is that while I have done a fair bit in my own project on drawing a related kind of diagrams, I have myself only begun thinking about how to make the resulting drawings nicely stylable/themeable.)

[1] https://mstone.info/depict/ -> https://github.com/mstone/depict

You might find it helpful to distinguish between visualizing the design of the system being implemented by your software, visualizing protocols being implemented by your software, visualizing the design of the your software itself, and visualizing important implementation details at runtime, e.g. for debugging, profiling, and operations.

For visualizing system designs, you should take a look at STAMP, e.g., via “Engineering A Safer World” + the resources at mit.edu/psas + on YouTube.

(Multiple tools, both commercial and libre, exist and are being developed to make these diagrams, although for what it’s worth, I mostly hear about people making them using draw.io, Google Drawings, on physical paper/whiteboards, or occasionally with specialized tooling.

I have also recently published a project in this area, https://github.com/mstone/depict, which I believe is well on its way toward addressing some unmet needs here.)

For visualizing protocols, things like sequence diagrams, data flow diagrams, DRAKON flow charts, value stream maps, and occasional more specialized objects like CPSA “cryptographic protocol shapes” / strand space skeletons are where I start depending on the flavor of what’s needed.

For visualizing the design of implementations themselves, I have not yet seen anything that I feel obliged to recommend; rather, here, I suggest investing in adding illustrations to your existing documentation in whatever way is easiest for you to use to clarify whatever subtleties you need to clarify for your audience.

(Here I tend to look at things like ASCII-art, SQLite’s railroad diagrams (now made with pikchr, AIUI), and sequence diagrams, as mentioned by other commenters, as helpful examples to start with.)

Finally, for implementing debugging/profiling/operational illustrations, there is a such a rich set of examples to turn to — whether from the very specialized (custom process model video rendering pipelines in robotics) to TensorBoard for TensorFlow to general-purpose tools like browser performance debugging suites, flame charts, or Go’s built-in profile graphing tools - that rather than learn any particular such tools, I’d instead suggest trying to get comfortable with the building blocks underlying these systems, which include contemporary GUI/web apps, custom drawing and animation tools like SVG, pretty printers, and Grammar-of-Graphics systems like vega-lite.

(Note: although it may seem superficially extraneous to your question, the reason I also suggest thinking about debugging visualizations in this context is because IMO, to work, they ~necessarily encode a visual model of the design of your implementation since it is the design of the implementation that provides the vocabulary and relationships that have to be understood and navigated in order to successfully debug/optimize/monitor any given running instance of whatever system you are building.)

Download Scrivano from Github.

Scrivano is also available on Linux platforms. You can download it at the following link https://github.com/scrivanolabs/ScrivanoForLinux/releases. It has mostly been tested on Fedora, but should work on any other distro. Any feedback is more than welcome. The Windows version is available on the Microsoft Store.

Scrivano is a new handwriting application for Windows tabets and computers (also available for Linux). It aims to be a simple way of taking notes for those who prefer writing with a stylus to typing. I've created this sub in the hope of gathering feedback and discussing how to improve the application with users.

Last year, I started developing a new handwriting application for Windows. I've always used OneNote for my handwritten notes, but (while still being great) I wasn't fully satisfied with it (due to things like not ideal printing behaviour and offline saving) and wanted to create something that fit my own use-case better. A few weeks ago, I finally released it on the Microsoft Store and you can download it here Scrivano - Microsoft Store (it's paid but you can try it for free for 30 days). Since, I'm a Fedora user too I also needed to view my notes from Linux so there's a Linux build as well which can be downloaded here. I hope to release the app on Android as well in the future.

I released a Microsoft Store! The application is called Scrivano and it is available at the following LINK. It is paid but there is a 30 days free trial (so there is no need to pay if you just want to try it out). A Linux version is available here.

I've been working on an app for handwritten notes using Qt for the past few months. I finally managed to get a Linux build working last week which can be downloaded here https://github.com/scrivanolabs/ScrivanoForLinux/releases (tested on Fedora only). The Windows version is available on the Microsoft Store https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/9MWCLGJ5XCBS.