23 points | by jumpalongjim 5 days ago ago
5 comments
FYI for any new or casual Mermaid users, it comes with a built-in alternate layout called `elk` that I find does a much cleaner job on complex flowcharts.
See docs here: https://mermaid.ai/open-source/config/layouts.html
Graph layout is a very interesting, very hard problem.
There's even a yearly competition - started in 1994 - whose results are announced at the yearly Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization.
It's not a subject I'm versed in, but can you talk more about your solution? Do you use a larger constraint solver or is it hand-coded?
--
Competition: https://mozart.diei.unipg.it/gdcontest/
The 34th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization, to be held in Ontario, Canada: https://graphdrawing.github.io/gd2026/
n.b. It's an independent conference, not under the auspices of e.g. IEEE or ACM.
This solves my biggest gripe with Mermaid.
It's an amazing tool, but I wish it were open source.
Well, it is. Mermaid.js
Just vibe code a user interface to it.
Looks cool. Price is pretty steep. Lucid chart is like $16/month.
FYI for any new or casual Mermaid users, it comes with a built-in alternate layout called `elk` that I find does a much cleaner job on complex flowcharts.
See docs here: https://mermaid.ai/open-source/config/layouts.html
Graph layout is a very interesting, very hard problem.
There's even a yearly competition - started in 1994 - whose results are announced at the yearly Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization.
It's not a subject I'm versed in, but can you talk more about your solution? Do you use a larger constraint solver or is it hand-coded?
--
Competition: https://mozart.diei.unipg.it/gdcontest/
The 34th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization, to be held in Ontario, Canada: https://graphdrawing.github.io/gd2026/
n.b. It's an independent conference, not under the auspices of e.g. IEEE or ACM.
This solves my biggest gripe with Mermaid.
It's an amazing tool, but I wish it were open source.
Well, it is. Mermaid.js
Just vibe code a user interface to it.
Looks cool. Price is pretty steep. Lucid chart is like $16/month.