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Simon Willison's Blog·20d ago·5 min read
Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)
TL;DR
Simon Willison developed a tool to convert Mermaid diagrams into ASCII art using Rust code. He discovered a more comprehensive Go library, mermaid-ascii, and had it compiled to WebAssembly for comparison.
✦ Why It Matters
Engineers should evaluate existing libraries like mermaid-ascii before building new tools to save time and resources.
Key Takeaways
- Consider using AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii for better features.
- Experiment with WebAssembly for performance improvements.
- Evaluate the visual output differences between libraries.
- Stay updated on new tools in diagram representation.
Full Summary
Mermaid to ASCII is a tool created to convert Mermaid diagrams into ASCII art, initially based on Rust code from Grok Build. During development, an older and more feature-rich Go library named AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii was identified, which provides enhanced functionality, including color support.
To evaluate the capabilities of both tools, Claude Fable 5 was utilized to compile the Go library into WebAssembly, allowing for a direct comparison. This comparison highlights the advantages of the Go library over the Rust implementation, particularly in terms of visual output.
The findings suggest that developers looking for richer features in ASCII art generation should consider using the AlexanderGrooff library. The exploration of these tools underscores the ongoing evolution of software libraries in the realm of diagram representation.