Nördnytt! 🤓Show HN: TikZ Editor – WYSIWYG editor for figures in LaTeX
I built an open-source WYSIWYG TikZ editor (available for web and desktop) that allows you to edit your TikZ source code visually by dragging and resizing elements. It simultaneously shows the source code and the rendered figure, and lets you edit either one while the two views stay in sync. I’m not aware of any other editors that are simultaneously source editors and WYSIWYG (even for editing SVG or HTML), and I’m quite pleased with how well the combination works.
The way the app is implemented is by parsing the TikZ code, and at all times keeping track of the exact source location of each object. Thereby, when a user drags an element to a new position, the app can override just the numbers in the coordinate without changing anything else in the code (such as line breaks or indentation).
This approach essentially required reimplementing a large fraction of TikZ, which is the kind of task that no human would ever want to do. I think building software that doesn’t exist yet because it would be impossibly tedious to code up is one of the great new possibilities thanks to coding agents, and it’s worth brainstorming for other examples. (This app was built almost entirely by Codex.)
Implementing the app came with lots of fun side quests, including building converters from SVG / pptx / ipe to TikZ, re-implementing the LaTeX hyphenation and line-breaking algorithm to support multi-line nodes, and making a color picker that uses the red!20!black color mixing notation used in LaTeX papers.
- gignico - 1375 sekunder sedanI've tried it now a little. The UI looks very cool, and generally the project is cool so congrats!
However, the generated TikZ code is not good in my opinion. Everything uses absolute coordinates, which in TikZ is seldom needed.
Just to start, if I place a single node I get absolute coordinates for it. Why? If you just write `\node {Hello};`, TikZ will put that at the center of the bounding box. No need to tell it's at `(0.5,2.91)` like it's happening in my test. Then features such as "align bottom" for a selection of multiple nodes should are manipulating the absolute coordinates instead of using TikZ's alignment features (anchors etc.).
I understand generating such code is more difficult. Maybe it can be something to point at for the next version, who knows...
- lopsotronic - 2709 sekunder sedanAh, I love CircuitiTikZ. Only way to do simple text-based circuit diagrams.
https://ctan.org/pkg/circuitikz?lang=en
https://github.com/circuitikz/circuitikz
Some years ago I wired it up with `asciidoctor-diagram` so we could have simple circuits in our Asciidoc maintenance manuals. The techs loved the hell out of it, and we could collaborate on the things in a git versioned ecosystem vs whatever fresh hell the PDM/ERP had for us.
A very nice complement to the already awesome WireViz (https://github.com/wireviz/WireViz)
- j2kun - 11127 sekunder sedanNeat! I also enjoyed https://q.uiver.app/ by https://github.com/varkor which is a bit more specialized.
- wjholden - 1466 sekunder sedanOh man, good on you identifying a product that needs to exist. I've used a few TikZ editors (both online and desktop) and none of them are just amazing.
But, I've taken my papers to Typst. Could you have the agent do the same thing for Cetz, the TikZ equivalent for Typst?
- master-lincoln - 12182 sekunder sedanAs a student I really wanted something like this. Thanks for making it open source. My theoretical computer science prof happened to be Till Tantau the inventor of TikZ. An awesome communicator too.
- mcswell - 4981 sekunder sedanI'm running Linux Mint (xfce version), and I installed the .deb version (TikZ.Editor_0.4.0_amd64.deb). It's very odd...for example, when I open it or do File/New, many (but not all) of the grid cells are rectangles, not squares. Am I doing something wrong, like installing the wrong version? Or maybe misinterpreting what the faint grey lines are?
- sorenjan - 10942 sekunder sedanLooks really nice. You might consider adding some presets to make it easier to get started, like some common neural net architectures and other use cases for TikZ.
- __mharrison__ - 12318 sekunder sedanThis is very cool, but I'm going to say the inevitable...
How hard would it be to support cetz? I'm not touching LaTeX if I can avoid it, but I'm using Typst all the time.
- GL26 - 12971 sekunder sedanAll STEM students and researches from the world thank you
- otto-riz - 1749 sekunder sedan> the kind of task that no human would ever want to do
I'm not an AI evangelist, but this kind of thing is such a welcome boon. More itches can be scratched!
- srean - 6504 sekunder sedanIs their anyone here old enough to remember Xfig ?
I was quite proud of the hours of work I had put in to configure it just so, with the 3d look and all.
- delta_p_delta_x - 11591 sekunder sedanThis is superb. Will you consider adding support for pgfplots[1]? When I was a student I was long considering writing a native application for real-time TikZing.
- whatever1 - 11763 sekunder sedanOMG! Psychiatrists are going to lose all of their graduate customers!
The world thanks you.
- meghanto - 3418 sekunder sedanAre you open to people repurposing this app as a plugin to larger apps like obsidian?
- adityamwagh - 13198 sekunder sedanHey! I've always wanted something like this! Thanks for building this!
- Littice - 12422 sekunder sedanThe killer feature for me is not drawing TikZ visually, but being able to touch old TikZ without turning the source into generated-looking soup.
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- cckolon - 4463 sekunder sedanThis is so cool. I would have loved this in college.
- djmips - 4426 sekunder sedan"TikZ ist kein Zeichenprogramm" (German for "TikZ is not a drawing program"). :-)
- dvorka - 10268 sekunder sedanI needed exactly this for years excellent work!
- emil-lp - 11456 sekunder sedanHere's what I would need: the ability to position five nodes in a circular fashion, so that they are evenly spaced.
- dima-quant - 11916 sekunder sedanThis is great, nice concept! Good use of coding agents. Now I can make diagrams much faster.
- hosteur - 12029 sekunder sedanWow. I would have loved something like this when I was studying in University.
- quantummagic - 11881 sekunder sedanGreat job! Thank you for making it open source.
At some point the people who seethe with hate for AI, and claim it's all hallucinations and illegitimate hype, are going to have to admit they were wrong. Projects like this are the proof staring them right in the face, if they care to look.
- cubefox - 6762 sekunder sedanThat's cool. I guess it doesn't support TikZ' relative positioning (left of etc) because WYSIWYG features like drag-and-drop require absolute positioning?
- david_2107 - 11805 sekunder sedanThat's awesome! Long overdue.
- k33n - 13224 sekunder sedanWow, this is really, really great. Congratulations on an excellent offering and piece of tech!
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