‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Show HN: Reladraw – A diagram language where you decide where to place things

413 points · 119 comments · jpwalsh234

  1. whizzter · · focus · HN ↗
    I like it, drawing stuff around can get tedious if an engine like this can do it "automatically" when adding more stuff instead of copy-paste-move.

    As a compiler writer I'm pondering if it'd be possible to parametrise to a degree with data-sources or you think that's something better suited to custom script generators (right now, it feels like you want to write a lot of this manually, but the grouping system does lend itself to wildcard expansions from data.

    1. jpwalsh234 · · focus · HN ↗
      That's an interesting idea. I already have planned for some programmer-like features (functions, custom attributes, variables). However, what you're talking about seems like maybe it would want to take in an outside file (e.g., CSV, JSON) and say "loop over every entity in add as a child in this container", that sort of thing?

      Am I getting that right? Super curious, because that sounds cool.

      1. whizzter · · focus · HN ↗
        Exactly, like a server map f.ex., would be neat to have it rendered from a dataset or when developing you often have the ability to spit out CSV,JSON,etc.

        It's a great starting point and I can see functions,etc being useful for other purposes so I think there's a tightrope to be walked in the design to be extensible but not get bogged down early either (if a function can result in an enumeration, you don't need a specific CSV/JSON syntax if it's just the result of a function.. but that adds other complciations naturally).

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.