Draw.io releases open source desktop versions(facebook.com)
facebook.com
Draw.io releases open source desktop versions
https://www.facebook.com/drawioapp/posts/1628618103829386
48 comments
For those worried about the electron memory usage, I'd recommend yEd from yworks.com. I've used it as a portable app at home and work and it's full featured and small.
I just ran up yEd on my MacBook, 240MB with a blank editor. draw.io Desktop is taking 60MB. Do you have other figures?
Includes its own embedded Java 8 JRE.
Does anyone have reasons why I might choose Draw.io over Gliffy? One major reason I use Gliffy is for Confluence integration at work, but I'm not opposed to using another tool and uploading the images if it is better.
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.mxgraph.conflu...
The key driver for the way we approach draw.io is the trust issue that all SaaS apps suffer from. Not only do they have your data, they have the app as well.
We always followed the approach of never store user data. On the app side of things, open sourcing the codebase went part of the way, but you'd still have to be technical enough to serve the app.
The Desktop versions are critical in that regard, you know you've got a tool that can't be taken away that will always open your diagrams (which you control the storage of).
You don't hear SaaS providers talking about this, because giving up control means lower profits, less chance of an IPO.
The key driver for the way we approach draw.io is the trust issue that all SaaS apps suffer from. Not only do they have your data, they have the app as well.
We always followed the approach of never store user data. On the app side of things, open sourcing the codebase went part of the way, but you'd still have to be technical enough to serve the app.
The Desktop versions are critical in that regard, you know you've got a tool that can't be taken away that will always open your diagrams (which you control the storage of).
You don't hear SaaS providers talking about this, because giving up control means lower profits, less chance of an IPO.
Awesome, thanks for the response!
How does draw.io compare to yEd?
For those wondering, it's draw.io wrapped in an electron app.
At ~175 MB with a blank drawing open, I've seen worse.
Some things I noticed about the menus (on Windows):
- The menus don't have hotkey support (Alt+…)
- The File menu is missing a Close option
- Submenus swich too soon on diagonal mouse movement
I'd suggest switching to native Windows menus. From other Electorn apps it seems this should be possible. I'm sure a way can be found to make the menu search feature work, too.
Another small note: on Windows, the close confirmation has the newer multi-option layout, the same you'd get when overwriting files in Explorer, but it only has an option to save changes. There is a cancel button, but that should really be an option.
Edit: memory measured with:
Some things I noticed about the menus (on Windows):
- The menus don't have hotkey support (Alt+…)
- The File menu is missing a Close option
- Submenus swich too soon on diagonal mouse movement
I'd suggest switching to native Windows menus. From other Electorn apps it seems this should be possible. I'm sure a way can be found to make the menu search feature work, too.
Another small note: on Windows, the close confirmation has the newer multi-option layout, the same you'd get when overwriting files in Explorer, but it only has an option to save changes. There is a cancel button, but that should really be an option.
Edit: memory measured with:
Get-Process -Name "draw.io" | %{$_.PM} | Measure-Object -Sum
Good feedback, thanks.
I wish there was a desktop app that allowed me to draw diagrams in "vector" ascii art that I could then process with `dia` or another similar program to produce images.
asciio is the true answer :) In fact I love using pure ASCII diagram in my emails, text memos, etc :)
https://metacpan.org/pod/App::Asciio
As it's not completely obvious, Asciio will save to plain text if you simply use the .txt extension, and else its own binary editable format.
Asciio is present in Debian/Ubuntu repositories.
https://metacpan.org/pod/App::Asciio
As it's not completely obvious, Asciio will save to plain text if you simply use the .txt extension, and else its own binary editable format.
Asciio is present in Debian/Ubuntu repositories.
That looks very good! Thanks!
There is SvgBobRus, written in Rust: https://github.com/ivanceras/svgbobrus
Here's a demo: http://ivanceras.github.io/svgbob-editor/
Here's a demo: http://ivanceras.github.io/svgbob-editor/
I think this is what you're looking for: http://asciiflow.com/
I usually just write Graphviz dot files when I need something in a hurry.
Edit: nevermind, misunderstood; this isn't what you're looking for.
Edit: nevermind, misunderstood; this isn't what you're looking for.
You may be interested in svgbob - https://github.com/ivanceras/svgbobrus
Thanks, svgbob looks really interesting; but what I'm missing is a tool to produce the ascii file to provide as input to svgbob/dia/etc.
Not exactly what you want, but macOS users can use the brilliant Monodraw to create ASCII images.
https://monodraw.helftone.com
https://monodraw.helftone.com
Damn, that's really cool. Wish it wasn't mac only :(
There are a number of alternatives, some of which are outlined here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/126630/creating-dia...
Well there is Emacs Artist Mode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIuX87Xo8Fc
Thanks, that looks pretty good – I'm gonna give it a try. The only thing missing seems to be the "vector" part.
For someone who uses Draw.io a whole lot at work this is great news
Since it's an electron app, I suspect there's going to be the flak about the memory usage.
But at the end of the day, these electron apps are fulfilling the need of users who enjoy desktop experiences of their essential web apps
Since it's an electron app, I suspect there's going to be the flak about the memory usage.
But at the end of the day, these electron apps are fulfilling the need of users who enjoy desktop experiences of their essential web apps
We're looking at about 60MB on macOS for a small diagram. Another thread reports Win asking for 175MB.
But as you say, it was electron or nothing for us, no way we can justify native apps.
But as you say, it was electron or nothing for us, no way we can justify native apps.
Using ~110MB for me on Windows. Considering you can get 8GB of RAM for ~£54[0], running this application is costing me roughly 61p worth of RAM when open. Or, looking at it a different way, on a modest system I can run 720 versions of this program.
Honestly in an age where memory is so cheap I'd much rather have an Electron app for every conceivable thing (which take a fraction of the time to create) as opposed to fully fledged applications that only do a few things.
E: Having the tab open in Chrome appears to use more memory for me[0], perhaps because of the extensions I use?
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-FURY-DDR3-Memory-Module/dp/B...
[1] https://puu.sh/xbNzL/503e54735e.png
Honestly in an age where memory is so cheap I'd much rather have an Electron app for every conceivable thing (which take a fraction of the time to create) as opposed to fully fledged applications that only do a few things.
E: Having the tab open in Chrome appears to use more memory for me[0], perhaps because of the extensions I use?
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-FURY-DDR3-Memory-Module/dp/B...
[1] https://puu.sh/xbNzL/503e54735e.png
On mobile, memory _may_ not be _that_ cheap if you look at what you pay for it in power requirements.
Exact data is hard to find, but, for example, http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compon... claims 2 to 3 watt per stick. That seems very little compared to CPU, video card or backlight, but your RAM more or less uses that _continuously_. Power usage doesn't go down if you don't use your laptop/tablet/phone, or don't use part of the memory (this may be an area where innovation is possible). So, power drain while your laptop/tablet/phone isn't is used may be dominated by RAM power requirements.
As I said: hard data is difficult to find, so I don't know how big this effect is. I think power usage is an important reason why Apple keeps the amount of RAM in their tablets and phones fairly low, though.
Exact data is hard to find, but, for example, http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compon... claims 2 to 3 watt per stick. That seems very little compared to CPU, video card or backlight, but your RAM more or less uses that _continuously_. Power usage doesn't go down if you don't use your laptop/tablet/phone, or don't use part of the memory (this may be an area where innovation is possible). So, power drain while your laptop/tablet/phone isn't is used may be dominated by RAM power requirements.
As I said: hard data is difficult to find, so I don't know how big this effect is. I think power usage is an important reason why Apple keeps the amount of RAM in their tablets and phones fairly low, though.
Every time electron apps come up, I bring up slack. It's currently using 1.3GB on my machine. I've got Spotify open too, with another 800MB. Adding another 8GB is easy at the lower levels, but I've got 32GB of ram in this machine, and regularly have to kill slack and spotify when compiling to get back 2-3GB.
Does anyone know if there are any lightweight alternatives to Electron in the works? Or if such an idea even makes sense?
If you don't mind doing your UI in canvas (maybe with react-canvas) then these two look interesting, although Nidium doesn't seem to support desktop anymore.
https://www.nidium.com/
http://impactjs.com/ejecta
Also, any election alternatives for desktop that specifically don't use a browser DOM? Something like react native for Linux/osx/windows or QT.
There is Brig (https://github.com/BrigJS/brig) but despite the fact that QML and JavaScript are already "married", and the immense popularity of both Qt and JS, it's far, far, away from Electron's maturity.
There are a few options.
http://alternativeto.net/software/electron/
One thing about these is that Electron can be optimized. I believe that one of the Visual Studio tools uses it and has dramatically lower memory than slack. Slack just doesn't try to improve performance.
http://alternativeto.net/software/electron/
One thing about these is that Electron can be optimized. I believe that one of the Visual Studio tools uses it and has dramatically lower memory than slack. Slack just doesn't try to improve performance.
Like to see Alternatives to electron as well - even super optimized electron on code Atom and Google Chrome are quite heavy on a MacBook Air
It does make sense, not a lot of people seem to be interested though - https://github.com/pojala/electrino
I remember XULrunner was fine like 15 years ago on a Pentium II. A lot less features and performance tho.
Slack and Spotify lack critical optimizations. They appear to leak long term objects like crazy.
This isn't Electron's fault. I have plenty Java apps just as guilty.
I do wish Slack was a better case for Electron. JavaScript isn't immune from leaky bad patterns, just the same as other langs/environments.
This isn't Electron's fault. I have plenty Java apps just as guilty.
I do wish Slack was a better case for Electron. JavaScript isn't immune from leaky bad patterns, just the same as other langs/environments.
Slack Spotify an electron apps are not only memory hoggsThey also heat up the Mac so much
Price isn't the only issue; speed has to be considered as well. If you have a program, and it only uses a small amount of memory, it'll fit into the cache and run fast. If you have a program that uses many times more memory than the cache can hold, it'll run slow. No matter how cheap RAM is, the cache is still going to be fixed to a small size.
For what it's worth, I'm completely fine with this. 16GB of RAM is inexpensive now and given the number of apps I have running at a time 0.25GB or so doesn't make any difference.
> it was electron or nothing for us
People forget this when demanding native versions. Creating multiple native apps is not free.
> it was electron or nothing for us
People forget this when demanding native versions. Creating multiple native apps is not free.
This really heats up my Mac
is there a native cocoa app that does latex diagrams
is there a native cocoa app that does latex diagrams
What I really need is an open source alternative to Sketch app (in electron?)
Draw.io is definitely in the top 10 of the most useful apps I've ever encountered. I'm constantly using it to illustrate my blog posts and videos, for mindmapping, for drawing diagrams that help me to understand some new idea I'm learning about(like React/Redux or Docker). And for website mockups of course.
If you haven't used it yet - I highly recommend it!