No, it’s its own system. I used it for a while for flowcharts and sequence diagrams at work, and it does the job okay. The main benefit over graphviz is that it’s way easier to learn and can be embedded in markdown more easily. But if you want anything more complicated than a flow, or you want any control over the weights, you’re stuck with graphviz.
It’s using d3 underneath for drawing, rather than Graphviz. Looks like someone liked the idea of PlantUML but wanted to build it in javascript (without Graphviz).
Having used mermaid for a decent amount of complex flowcharts (used it for architecture diagrams for an auth proxy) I really like it. I find the layout of subgraphs to be lacking, and it could have extra features like vertical or horizontal alignment, but overall I’ve had a good experience in being able to build complex graphs relatively simply. I’ve been evangelizing it on my team for describing our infrastructure as code modules. I find it quite helpful considering I used to write graphviz and this is sooooo much easier (but less powerful obviously).
Addressing @soc’s comment about markdeep, mermaid is much more focused on graphing and it’s markdown is more concise, but you lose the fine control of markdeep.
Does anyone have experience in how this stacks up against Markdeep?
Is this just a frontend for graphviz?
No, it’s its own system. I used it for a while for flowcharts and sequence diagrams at work, and it does the job okay. The main benefit over graphviz is that it’s way easier to learn and can be embedded in markdown more easily. But if you want anything more complicated than a flow, or you want any control over the weights, you’re stuck with graphviz.
Thanks. Might be useful for some but I’ll stick with orgmode where you can embed graphviz, ditaa and a whole bunch of others.
It’s using d3 underneath for drawing, rather than Graphviz. Looks like someone liked the idea of PlantUML but wanted to build it in javascript (without Graphviz).
Having used mermaid for a decent amount of complex flowcharts (used it for architecture diagrams for an auth proxy) I really like it. I find the layout of subgraphs to be lacking, and it could have extra features like vertical or horizontal alignment, but overall I’ve had a good experience in being able to build complex graphs relatively simply. I’ve been evangelizing it on my team for describing our infrastructure as code modules. I find it quite helpful considering I used to write graphviz and this is sooooo much easier (but less powerful obviously).
Addressing @soc’s comment about markdeep, mermaid is
much morefocused on graphing and it’s markdown is more concise, but you lose the fine control of markdeep.