paper.js VS GoJS, a JavaScript Library for HTML Diagrams

Compare paper.js vs GoJS, a JavaScript Library for HTML Diagrams and see what are their differences.

paper.js

The Swiss Army Knife of Vector Graphics Scripting – Scriptographer ported to JavaScript and the browser, using HTML5 Canvas. Created by @lehni & @puckey (by paperjs)
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paper.js GoJS, a JavaScript Library for HTML Diagrams
23 13
14,225 7,423
0.6% 1.1%
3.7 6.1
17 days ago 4 days ago
JavaScript HTML
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
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.

paper.js

Posts with mentions or reviews of paper.js. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-29.
  • How Framer/Figma is built?
    2 projects | /r/webdev | 29 May 2023
    I started with angular and paper.js: http://paperjs.org/
  • Polygon JS libraries
    1 project | /r/p5js | 11 Apr 2023
    In a thread in the Processing forum, Boolean operations in polygons , user ErraticGenerator suggests using g.js or Paper.js.
  • Looking for a javascript library with good wrapping support
    2 projects | /r/gis | 31 Mar 2023
    It is likely that paper.js provides the functionality needed. I will probably investigate it at some point since it appears to be the more popular library Compare paper.js & bezier.js.
  • Making YouTube video with React
    9 projects | dev.to | 25 Feb 2023
    To solve that issue, I searched for some solutions using canvas. I didn’t want to work with pure canvas so after doing some research, I settled with paper.js.
  • The Continuity of Splines – Video Essay by Freya Holmér
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Dec 2022
    Ooh, the Chebyshev basis is neat. I hadn't seen exactly that before. It reminds me a lot of the "shape control" technique[1] which is also similar to a basis function approach but has a bit of linear solving. Essentially, you get one point (usually at t = 0.5), and also the direction but not magnitudes of the tangents at the endpoints (G1, not C1). This is one of the better-performing existing techniques for offset curve, though does have stability problems (in particular, nasty behavior for a symmetric "S" curve).

    Regarding collaboration with Freya, if she is open to it, please get in touch. I do have some ideas.

    [1]: A New Shape Control and Classification for Cubic Bézier Curves, Yang and Huang, 1993, PDF cache: https://github.com/paperjs/paper.js/files/752955/A.New.Shape...

  • which technology or framework is used to create geometry-draggable canvas like this?
    7 projects | /r/Frontend | 23 Oct 2022
    Paper.js - example (not interactive, just code)
  • Animating an svg
    1 project | /r/webdev | 29 Aug 2022
    Just remember you can do some SVG displacement with Paper.JS
  • Writing HTML sucks and No-code doesn't help
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 May 2022
    > <p>Oh yeah, you reminded me of the template fatigue that was paper.js and it trying to reinvent scripting on the client side with <script type="text/paperscript"> templates that could use templates that could use templates... and so on. [0] I was wondering why people would go to such great lengths just to avoid having to script in the browser.<p>The way I saw it at the time was that I've rediscovered the same mistakes that PHP did back in the days. All the recurs(iv)ed templating problems, all the OOP fatigue that never worked out (magento and zend, anyone?), and all the inheritance based "reinventions" of existing web technologies like OOCSS [1].<p>I mean, at some point every engineer should be wise enough to give up on trying to predict the future. Especially in projects they cannot predict what features are going to be implemented, so I'd naturally assume that modularity and compositional or entity/component aspects will win in later revisions or refactor decisions. But I was wrong with that assumption, I guess :S<p>I also can kinda understand the general bias towards closure among functional folks. I guess that lots of people at the time (or nowadays) had high hopes for it allowing to go more "functional" in its approach, allowing compositional patterns to be useful on the web. But, honestly, JS itself is so flexible and can be used in all kinds of architectural patterns that I think closure's purpose is kind of void by its own concept.<p>When comparing closure with, say, typescript (which I also don't agree with, because "string" and "String" and "any" are pointless from any language design perspective): Typescript at least has the benefit of typed API docs and good IDE integrations (due to LSP) that can be used in large teams to reduce the overhead of getting started with working on foreignly-owned code - whereas closure doesn't have any unique selling point in my opinion. I mean, even scala.js has a unique selling point when being judged like that.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/paperjs/paper.js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/paperjs/paper.js</a><p>[1] <a href="http://oocss.org/" rel="nofollow">http://oocss.org/</a>
  • Diagnosing RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded in React KeyEscapeUtils
    1 project | /r/codehunter | 5 May 2022
    Our webapp is written with React and Redux using the official react-redux bindings. Another primary library used in this web app is PaperJS. We recently transitioned this to being a Redux app, though it has used React for a while.
  • How to upload image into HTML5 canvas
    1 project | /r/codehunter | 23 Apr 2022
    I am currently using http://paperjs.org to create an HTML5 canvas drawing app. I want to let users upload images into the canvas. I know I need to make a login and signup but is there an easier way? I have seen the HTML5 drag and drop upload.

GoJS, a JavaScript Library for HTML Diagrams

Posts with mentions or reviews of GoJS, a JavaScript Library for HTML Diagrams. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-09-29.
  • Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Sep 2023
    Have spent six figures yearly on ads, mostly for reach for the developer-focused diagram library GoJS (https://gojs.net)

    > Each experiment will need ~$500 and 2 weeks

    I would add a zero if you want serious data. I would also double the timescale. $5,000 over 4 weeks

    I second the uselessness of Google Display, it might look like conversions numbers are good but they are 100% too good to be true. As soon as you look into them you find the sources are things like "ad from HappyFunBabyTime Android app". You have to ruthlessly prune daily for months to get anything real, and even then I'm skeptical of value. For a developer tool with very strict conversion metrics!

    But I disagree on Google Search:

    > Good for conversion, bad for awareness.

    Before we were popular it was excellent for awareness. Post popularity its much more arguable.

  • Purescript bindings for GoJS
    3 projects | /r/purescript | 29 Jun 2023
    Creating the Halogen components would be simple enough if one takes inspiration from gojs-react. The issue is that there are no PureScript bindings for the GoJS types themselves, but GoJS does provide .ts.d declarations, which means I could use purescript-read-dts, but that library's maturity/usability seems somewhat ambiguous, according to an author's post from 3 years ago.
  • Any Ideas How to Create a Graph Builder UI in React?
    2 projects | /r/reactjs | 24 Jan 2023
    used goJS in one project and konva in another
  • Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've ever built?
    33 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Nov 2022
    I built GoJS, which is one of the most popular commercial JS diagramming libraries: https://gojs.net

    I built carefulwords, a very fast thesaurus and quote site for inspiration, used by... tens of people a day. Eg: https://carefulwords.com/gift https://carefulwords.com/solitude

    I mostly made it for myself, me and my wife use it all the time. I am slowly editing down the thesaurus to managable size.

    I built a 12x16 "Goose Palace" barn out of local pine timbers, which taught me timber framing, and taught my tiny baby who turned 2 years old while doing it that this is just the kind of thing that people normally do, build barns in their driveway. Some context: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the-goose-palace

    Some photos of building it with the baby: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1584169368203956225

    I designed my house, and have been writing extensively about that. Maybe this is the most impactful, since photos of it are all over Pinterest and other sites, now. The first post on that: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/designing-a-new-old-home-...

    I am not sure what is most impactful. Maybe ultimately it is building my family.

  • Node-Based UIs
    10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Nov 2022
    I made a pull request for GoJS (https://gojs.net)

    I have been building this canvas-based graphing library since 2011, and it contains a good number of features around customization and interactivity that are not found in other libraries. It is commercial for non-academic use however.

  • Where I can learn how to do the following in React?
    1 project | /r/reactjs | 11 Nov 2022
    in one project we use konva, in another we used gojs. Any of them or some other library needs some training and introduce own limitations but it still way way way better than handing all the coordinates, calculations, routing etc on your own.
  • TypeScript is terrible for library developers
    16 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Aug 2022
    I am really surprised by this guy's opinion. I make GoJS (https://gojs.net/), a diagramming library written in TypeScript. The project began in 2011 and we converted it to TS in 2018. It's been a huge plus. The sole downside was the initial time it took during conversion, but even in doing so we caught bugs with incorrect input types, documentation mistakes, etc.

    On our end, it enforces type safety better than the Google Closure Compiler. There has scarcely been a problem with type complexity that was not ultimately our fault. Just a couple minor things that TS amended later. For that matter the TS experience has only gotten better, generally.

    On our users end, we can now give them a .d.ts file that's much richer and easier for us to produce to aid their autocompletion. And we can use that .d.ts file to ensure that all the methods we intended to expose/minify are getting exposed. The advantages with the .d.ts and documentation make it feel almost essential to me for library developers to consider TS.

    TypeScript has only made debugging easier, much easier since it catches errors at time of typing unlike the closure compiler. The sole exception is that debugging is a bit slower since I have to transpile instead of just refreshing the browser. But I have tsc set to compile a relatively unminified version of the JS. But if the slowness gets to me, I can just edit the JS output until I solve the issue, and then carry those edits over to the TS. This has never felt like a problem, though maybe his library is significantly more complicated.

    Feel free to ask me anything if you have questions about library design + TS.

  • Ask HN: How to quickly animate sketches and 2D diagrams?
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Mar 2022
    GoJS might work for you: https://gojs.net

    Although the focus of the library is interactivity and not setting up sequences of animation, but that is possible too.

  • It's always been you, Canvas2D
    12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Mar 2022
    My livelihood has been primarily building a Canvas diagramming library since 2010 (https://gojs.net), if anyone has any questions about 2D Canvas use in the real-world I'd be happy to answer them.

    roundRect is great. Though you don't need 4 arcTo in order to make a rounded rect, you can use bezier instead (we do). Their example is also 1% amusing because they set the `fillStyle` but then call `stroke` (and not `fill`). I'll have to do some performance comparisons, since that's the operative thing for my use case (and any library author).

    text modifiers are very welcome. It's crazy how annoying measuring still is, especially if you want thinks to look perfectly consistent across browsers. Though the chrome dominance is making things easier in one way, I guess.

    context.reset is kinda funny. Most high-performance canvas apps will never want to use it. For that matter you want to set all properties as little as possible, especially setting things like context.font, which are slow even if you're setting it to the same value. (Or it was, I haven't tested that in several years).

    I'm sure most users know this by now, but generally for performance the fewer calls you make to the canvas and the context, the beter. This is even true of transforms: It's faster to make your own Matrix class, do all your own matrix translation, rotation, multiplication, etc, and then make a single call to `context.setTransform`, than it is to call the other context methods.

  • Problem with some gojs gantt model
    1 project | /r/learnjavascript | 6 Jun 2021
    I have some problem with gojs(https://gojs.net/),

What are some alternatives?

When comparing paper.js and GoJS, a JavaScript Library for HTML Diagrams you can also consider the following projects:

fabric.js - Javascript Canvas Library, SVG-to-Canvas (& canvas-to-SVG) Parser

d3 - Bring data to life with SVG, Canvas and HTML. :bar_chart::chart_with_upwards_trend::tada:

p5.js - p5.js is a client-side JS platform that empowers artists, designers, students, and anyone to learn to code and express themselves creatively on the web. It is based on the core principles of Processing. http://twitter.com/p5xjs —

draw.io - draw.io is a JavaScript, client-side editor for general diagramming.

two.js - A renderer agnostic two-dimensional drawing api for the web.

react-vis - Data Visualization Components

three.js - JavaScript 3D Library.

Konva - Konva.js is an HTML5 Canvas JavaScript framework that extends the 2d context by enabling canvas interactivity for desktop and mobile applications.

joint - A proven SVG-based JavaScript diagramming library powering exceptional UIs