ggrossetie
commented
2 years ago Hi @borekb,
Thanks for your kind words abour Kroki! 🤗
If I understand correctly, the hosted kroki.io doesn't persist any data – in only uses compute (VMs by Exoscale) but there's no long-term storage of any data. This means that the entire diagram has to fit into the URL, via deflate + base64 as described in the README.
That's correct.
I wonder if you would consider Excalidraw-like approach which uses a clever technique:
This is a good idea and something I've considered but I'm relunctant to persist data (even if they are uncrypted). And to be completely honest, if we end up providing this feature it will most likely require a subscription. Why? Because we are now responsible for the data privacy/security and backup/recovery which come at a cost.
I understand that Kroki.io is simpler when it doesn't need to worry about data persistence but I hope that this example shows that the benefits of Excalidraw-like approach are substantial.
I'm fully aware of the benefits of such solution but also its constraints 😄
If we want to provide a good user experience, we would probably need a diagram editor where we would be able to "save" a diagram using a shorter URL. We could even use a user-defined name (i.e., https://img.krokio.io/borekb/client-server.svg). Lot of exciting possibilities but we are now talking about a fullblown product that requires funding.
The question is, are users willing to pay a subscription fee to get such features? So far I've been fortunate enough to get Exoscale support but it does not cover all expenses.
Having said that, anyone can implement/provide this feature on top of Kroki.
BTW a practical limit for URL length seems to be only around 2000 characters / 2kB, probably a bit more in modern scenarios but it's still way too little for powerful diagramming tools like Excalidraw or draw.io/diagrams.net (which is not currently implemented but would be super-nice if it was, and there's an issue for it: #405).
Yes, the max URL length is a well-know limitation (described in the documentation: https://docs.kroki.io/kroki/setup/configuration/#_max_uri_length).
borekb
sturtison
Hi, I've recently came across this amazing 😍 service, it's so nice that I don't need to install all the tools locally!
If I understand correctly, the hosted https://kroki.io/ doesn't persist any data – in only uses compute (VMs by Exoscale) but there's no long-term storage of any data. This means that the entire diagram has to fit into the URL, via deflate + base64 as described in the README.
I wonder if you would consider Excalidraw-like approach which uses a clever technique:
excalidraw.com/#json=...This means that Excalidraw URLs are fixed width regardless of diagram complexity:
For comparison, here is the same scenes via Kroki:
I understand that Kroki.io is simpler when it doesn't need to worry about data persistence but I hope that this example shows that the benefits of Excalidraw-like approach are substantial.
BTW a practical limit for URL length seems to be only around 2000 characters / 2kB, probably a bit more in modern scenarios but it's still way too little for powerful diagramming tools like Excalidraw or draw.io/diagrams.net (which is not currently implemented but would be super-nice if it was, and there's an issue for it: https://github.com/yuzutech/kroki/issues/405).