Mermaid: Create diagrams and visualizations using text and code
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderIt's convenient that GitHub Markdown supports graphs natively, and I've used Mermaid there successfully. However, I was fairly disappointed with Mermaid itself; I found the syntax irregular and non-intuitive (the syntax for every different graph type feels like it was designed by different people working independently), the documentation was sparse (though it exists at all, so I'll give it points for that), and worst of all the error messages were atrociously cryptic and entirely unhelpful. That said, I also found…
I use this not infrequently when producing documentation. But it's one of those things which is most of the time ok, but when it's not it's very dissatisfying, and I don't have a concise term for the (common) source of that dissatisfaction. When it produces a poor layout, you have to either abandon the tool completely for that use case, or you have to use an entirely different tool set to fix the output (like just editing the SVG). I…
Seems like the perfect complement to PlantUML
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 467
- Total comments
- 92
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-06-15 | Generation of diagrams and flowcharts from text in a similar manner as markdownFirst breakout | nkjoep | 111 | 18 |
| 2020-12-24 | Mermaid – Markdownish syntax for generating flowcharts, sequence diagrams | jstanley | 4 | 0 |
| 2021-09-25 | Mermaid: Create diagrams with Markdown-like text | zrail | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-05-05 | Mermaid: Create diagrams and visualizations using text and codeBest thread · Latest 20+ point return | tomduncalf | 349 | 73 |
| 2022-10-27 | Mermaid – Markdownish syntax for generating diagrams, gantt charts, Git graphs | thunderbong | 2 | 1 |