Diagrams · Svgbob macro
Type dashes and pipes, get a clean vector diagram
With the Svgbob macro the box you draw with +---+ and the arrow you draw
with --> come out as a tidy vector diagram on the page. The picture and
the text behind it are the same thing, so you get no export step and nothing to keep in
sync.
You already know the syntax
Plus signs, dashes and pipes for boxes; slashes for diagonals; quotes and dots for
rounded corners; o and * for circles. There is no diagram
language to learn - you draw the shape you want with the characters that look like
it, and the macro tidies up the strokes.
Your rough sketch comes out looking deliberate
Hand-typed ASCII art never lines up perfectly, and yours does not have to. Lines get straightened, rough arcs are smoothed into true circles and the diagram comes out looking intended - sharp at any zoom, because it is vector rather than a picture of characters.
Anyone amends the diagram in three characters
Reviewing an image means asking its author to change it. Reviewing this means editing three characters, in the page, without a drawing tool. Your architecture sketches stay current because correcting them costs nothing.
Nothing leaves your page to be drawn
Nothing has to be uploaded and nothing is sent away to be rendered - the vector is
produced in the reader's browser. Type the art into the macro or point it at a file
- URL, attachment, Google Drive, or a credentialed S3, SFTP or database connection -
and inside a Markdown document a fenced svgbob block renders right
where you wrote it.
What the Kroki bundles do with your topology
There is no other svgbob app, only the Kroki bundles - and they work by sending your ASCII art to kroki.io and rendering whatever image the service returns. For a napkin sketch that is fine; for an internal architecture diagram it is your topology leaving the building to be drawn. This macro turns the characters into vector in the reader's own browser, and reads them from wherever you keep them, down to a credentialed S3 or SFTP path.
Svgbob is one of 31 macros in Macro Pack
One app to install, one licence to renew, one place your team learns - and 30 more formats it already reads, from spreadsheets and diagrams to API specs and documents.
See every macro in the pack