Excalidraw

free diagram tool - mimics hand-drawn style like Balsamiq Mockups https://excalidraw.com/

https://offbyone.us/posts/why-is-excalidraw-so-good/

Why do I want to play with this, if already using Miro?

• free/open-source would be nice, esp for future collaboration with others, or to encourage for FluxGarden users
  • https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw mostly TypeScript
• Miro doesn't render when you embed it (see issues with Excalidraw below)
• I like the hand-drawn aesthetic. (Update: more true with mockups than diagrams.)
• some sorta auto-gen of bullet lists to diagram? Seems unlikely, I'm rarely seeking a nice clean/simple/auto hierarchy.
• auto-link double-brackets WikiWords in diagram. Don't see that working.
• conclusion: putting it aside
• update: Miro's not good for drawing straight lines that aren't connectors. Excalidraw is easier for that.

Update: what would be the biggest wins?

• in-page diagram whose nodes can wikilink
• and have those links included in backlinks
• which implies it has to be in the FluxGarden server, not a separate server that's embedded....
• would it be ok to require the whole page to be Excalidraw, or does it need to be mixed-media? I think pure-Excalidraw would be ok....
  • except obviously you'd want the headers/footers/etc, plus authentication called, etc.
  • so I'd have the flask server call out to TypeScript? What does that even mean?
    • calling TypeScript from Python

if you export/download, file has .excalidraw extension - looks like JSON

• very noisy - see tweet

If you export a "shareable link" you get something like https://excalidraw.com/#json=_w1sjG5z_x0EziTi3bPlk,EM0cNOkdhzsKVYiLjIqPzw

• hmm what if stick that in iframe? nope though it seems to work here -
• ah it works in Safari, but not (Mac) Firefox or Chrome!
• doesn't work in Android Firefox or Chrome, either.