Show HN: Box of Rain - Auto-Layouted ASCII Diagrams

4 comments

• latchkey 3 days ago
  Neat, but you can just do this in mermaid too. Taking one of your examples:

    <mermaid>
    flowchart LR
  
    web([Frontend])
  
    subgraph platform [Cloud Platform]
      api([API Server])
      db[(Database)]
      api --> db
    end
  
    web -->|HTTPS| api
    </mermaid>
  

  If you install the latest https://oj-hn.com , you can see it rendered inline here.
  [-]
  • switz 3 days ago
    Fair point. I added basic mermaid parsing to the library so you can do that here too.

        $ echo 'flowchart LR
            web([Frontend])
            subgraph platform [Cloud Platform]
              api([API Server])
              db[(Database)]
              api --> db
            end
            web -->|HTTPS| api' | npx box-of-rain --mermaid
    
                               ╔══ Cloud Platform ════════════════════╗
                               ║                                      ║
        ╭──────────╮           ║  ╭────────────╮      ╔════════════╗  ║
        │          │           ║  │            │      ║            ║  ║
        │ Frontend │ ─── HTTPS ──▶│ API Server │ ────▶║  Database  ║  ║
        │          │           ║  │            │      ║            ║  ║
        ╰──────────╯           ║  ╰────────────╯      ╚════════════╝  ║
                               ╚══════════════════════════════════════╝

    [-]
    • latchkey 6 hours ago
      Nice work! Love it.
• Retr0id 10 hours ago
  On my system the "right arrow" glyph is 2 units wide and breaks all the layouts.
  [-]
  • OhMeadhbh 8 hours ago
    First off, let me say it is awesome you're doing something like this.

    But... I'm encountering a similar issue on both Chrome and Firefox on Leenucks. I guess it's possible you don't see the problem on your Mac because both these browsers use the OS to do font rendering.
  • switz 10 hours ago
    TIL about ambiguous width unicode characters. Turns out some locales render these chars as double width. I'm attempting to work out a solution.

    Seems like maybe there are some universal half-width characters that can be used.

    https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/

    [-]
    • exceptione 13 minutes ago
      Weird. Same issue with NL-locale @ firefox, while terminal is ok. So it is not confined to East-Asian locales if that is what you think.
    • Retr0id 5 hours ago
      Unfortunately even if you pick nominally-equal-width glyphs, on the web you can still get screwed over by font substitution/fallback done by the browser.
  • Surac 3 hours ago
    same in my Brave Browser, why not stick to nomal Ascii?
• josefdlange 7 hours ago
  I'm just here for the Grateful Dead reference.
  [-]
  • josefdlange 7 hours ago
    Holy moly -- you're behind Relisten, OP? I owe you a great debt of gratitude for the hours of musical joy Relisten has given me.
    [-]
    • switz 7 hours ago
      Yup! We’re just one link in the chain (bands, tapers, archivists, & the listeners), but I appreciate the sentiment. Alec and I have been running Relisten for over a decade and we’ve put a lot of work into it these past few years.

      Had to give the Dead a little nod here

      [-]
      • josefdlange 7 hours ago
        Too true! Feels extra nice to be able to spread the sentiment of gratitude so far and wide. Keep it up!