Closed jeaye closed 3 years ago
If you wrap your text in \text{...}
, that should solve the first issue. You can write \\
(outside \text{...}
) to create a new line. Regarding the third issue, I'm not sure how off the top of my head how to wrap text in a box in LaTeX in a way that's supported by KaTeX, but it might be possible. I'd have to think about that one: if it's possible directly in LaTeX already, that's preferable to implementing a new feature.
Not trying to bloat this project if the goal is more math than other types of diagramming as the poster requests, but it definitely adds a significant learning curve to need to learn LaTeX to apply basic formatting to the diagram. Maybe some kind of "rich text editor" style buttons to create the proper syntax could work if the project is tightly bound to LaTeX?
My primary motivation was to make an editor for commutative diagrams (for which I am assuming users know basic LaTeX), but if there is significant interest in making quiver more general-purpose, it's something I'm willing to consider. I'm not sure the best place to garner interest, but perhaps this issue will do for now?
Definitely agreed: a rich text (maybe Markdown) editor would be superb. All of the people struggling to make nice looking DAGs with Graphviz or LibreOffice would agree, I bet. I've updated my original ticket and title to summarize this better.
+1 for the possibility to wrap nodes (or even more: groups of cells) into boxes (circles, rectangles, etc.). Even in other areas of math or compsci, this would be most useful.
Thanks for this very interesting project. I agree with #@jeaye that, with a few of additions, your editor is of far broader applicability and use than you may imagine.
@jeaye have you checked out draw.io? It is FOSS and works in the browser (and even in VS Code ;) ). I think the strength of quiver is its LaTeX support and its concentration of commutative diagrams. draw.io/diagrams.net is more like a universal purpose diagram editor - it does not look nice all the time, but is very convenient to use.
@jeaye have you checked out draw.io? It is FOSS and works in the browser (and even in VS Code ;) ). I think the strength of quiver is its LaTeX support and its concentration of commutative diagrams. draw.io/diagrams.net is more like a universal purpose diagram editor - it does not look nice all the time, but is very convenient to use.
Indeed I have. In fact, I tried it before making that last ASCII diagram. I believe the problems I had were around the fact that its node connections and labels are quite limited.
It could be that the way I'm looking to use these is not typical; that would surprise me, though.
Regarding box typesetting, is there a way to get more control by, e.g., creating some sort of parbox/minipage (and then do arbitrary LaTeX stuff inside). I guess an issue is that an advantage of Quiver is the flexible sizing of cells, but minipages require an absolute width...
There's a question of how many of these advanced layout features KaTeX supports too: I don't think it supports \parbox
or minipage
.
Yeah I just checked. It seems indeed there's no such thing as a minipage. I guess multiline text and alignment could partly be simulated with array
s which, apparently, are possible.
In the past, I have used
https://github.com/jluttine/tikz-bayesnet
to make DAGs with tikz, but editing them is tedious. It would be great if the quiver editor could support node decorations like that.
I've given this a little more thought. I think there are three aspects:
To summarise these thoughts: I don't think I am going to be able to commit to working on any more general purpose features that I don't see as being useful for commutative diagrams. However, if some others are interested in using quiver as a starting point for a more general editor, I would be happy to facilitate that by explaining parts of the implementation and suggesting how new features might be implemented. Unfortunately, as a side project, I only have limited time to dedicate to quiver, and so I want to prioritise commutative diagrams.
Completely understood, varkor. That's your call to make. Awesome work so far and thanks for the discussion.
Intro
I think people looking to make great looking network or flow diagrams don't have many options available. Especially for free and on any OS. This has led me to mainly stick with ASCII, but its limits are so painfully obvious. After seeing Quiver on HN, I tried making one of my most recent ASCII diagrams using Quiver.
The issues
The example ASCII diagram
The example Quiver diagram
Summary
I realize this isn't the exact intended usage of Quiver, but it could be that your audience is larger than you had originally imagined. Thanks for the great tool and the permissive license.