alt Hacker NewsI only use diagramming tools with automatic layout algos to generate visualizations programmatically to debug things. For documentation purpose, I largely prefer to draw them by hand using OmniGraffle, because making graphs look nice using tools like graphviz is very complex and you find yourself abusing features to hack your vision into reality
What's dearly needed in my opinion is a graph layout algo based on a machine learning model (so that it can take into account readability and aesthetics). Unfortunately what I found so far is mostly concerned with displaying large graphs, which is kind of another domain altogether.
I hope Mermaid is collecting every single edition point that happens on their UI, that would make for a nice dataset I guess.
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Also, some interesting links I stumbled upon while exploring this space:
Graphviz-like generic graph-drawing library. More options, more control.
Experiments by the same team responsible for the development of ELK, at Kiel University
https://github.com/kieler/KLighD
Kieler project wiki
https://rtsys.informatik.uni-kiel.de/confluence/display/KIEL...
Constraint-based graph drawing libraries
JS implementation
https://ialab.it.monash.edu/webcola/
Some cool stuff:
HOLA: Human-like Orthogonal Network Layout
https://ialab.it.monash.edu/~dwyer/papers/hola2015.pdf
Confluent Graphs demos: makes edges more readable.
https://www.aviz.fr/~bbach/confluentgraphs/
Stress-Minimizing Orthogonal Layout of Data Flow Diagrams with Ports
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4626.pdf
Improved Optimal and Approximate Power Graph Compression for Clearer Visualisation of Dense Graphs
Hi! I'm Dominic from the Mermaid product team. You raise some good points here. We released the whiteboard to help users get an exact layout they'd like, but it's in its early stages and is undergoing a lot of improvements.
I understand that automatic layout algos is one of the big draws of Mermaid since it creates a lot of speed, but our current layouts can get a little convoluted. I like your idea on creating a machine learning model, but I'm curious what your biggest pain points are or if you have any basic requirements for a readable and aesthetic diagram. Is it made with hard corners on edges? Rounded?
Would love to hear any thoughts you might have on this! You can email me at [email protected] if you'd be willing to share. Thanks for your comment!
We make (and sell) one, you can play with it here: https://play.d2lang.com/?script=qlDQtVOo5AIEAAD__w%3D%3D&lay...
Bigger example: https://play.d2lang.com/?script=rJLfavMwDMXv_RR6gYbvo3ce7FWG...
(I don't like to self promo on competitor posts, but since Mermaid doesn't compete in making its own layout engine I felt sharing this under this thread is relevant to HN. If anyone from Mermaid finds it in poor taste just let me know and I'll delete)