milen

I’ve implemented that feature but I haven’t had the time to push out a new update (family life and day job take up all my time).

I’ll try to prioritise this over the next few weeks.

Thanks for all the kind words to everyone who likes Monodraw.

(Developer of Monodraw)

Yup, that's me! EventBox [1] was rebranded as Socialite after it got acquired [2] by Realmac Software.

[1] https://milen.me/software/eventbox-walkthrough/

[2] https://www.macworld.com/article/200462/realmac_eventbox.htm...

The team is just me - the developer.

There’s no affiliation whatsoever, I’m actually quite surprised every time Monodraw appears on the front page as the app just had its 10th birthday.

I would have assumed most people in the community would know about it by now.

At least back in the day, it used to be common to "buy a license" or "buy a serial key". I didn't really put too much thought into the phrasing, as I haven't received any feedback.

Regardless, when you buy it, it's yours forever - no activation, no DRM, no subscription, no fine print.

(Monodraw developer here).

As jamil7 noted, Monodraw predates SwiftUI by about 4yrs.

But more importantly, my priority is delivering the best user experience and that's where AppKit shines.

One idea I've been toying with would be to do a Kickstarter-style campaign and if it reaches a certain threshold, then I know it would be worth porting.

FWIW, pirated copies of Monodraw are widely available, I take that as a form of flattery :D

Thank you!

Appreciated!

Oh, wow - so happy to hear from a Clear user!

I was one of the co-creators of Clear and the developer who built the iOS app. It was co-created by me, Realmac and Impending. I had previously interned at Realmac and had been friends with the founder, Dan (they acquired another app of ours - EventBox, which later got rebranded as Socialite).

Thank you for the appreciation!

It's on the TODO list!

Yeah, it's unclear how many people fall into that bucket. I'm sure it's non-zero but I don't know if it's worth the time.

Targeting Windows/Linux/web still means I cannot re-use the sources. But targeting web might be faster in terms of development time, although I don't have deep expertise on non-Apple platforms, so I cannot say for sure.

Yeah, there's a few such libraries that I'm aware of but I haven't had time to evaluate them. I do plan to at least look into them and make decision from there.

That makes sense - I deliberately did not go down the subscription route.

Thank you!

The top two features I want to add next are table support and some form of auto layout (like flexbox).

I really care about stability and performance, so I’m happy to hear that it’s being appreciated.

Monodraw's main selling point is that it's a fully native AppKit macOS app. If you value the experience, then you might like the app.

asciiflow.com is great as well.

(Monodraw developer here)

Thank you for the kind words!

Would you consider adding an '8-bit character bitmap' mode, which allows for the bitmap to also be edited?

Can you clarify with an example? Monodraw supports "surfaces" which are just like bitmaps - you can use the Pencil tool and draw on those surfaces with any characters you want (there's a palette in the inspector), just like a bitmap editor.

The direct version is not sandboxed as I didn't want to deal with Sparkle (autoupdater) and sandboxing. The Mac App Store version is sandboxed.

Good luck with your project! The world is big enough for multiple products in the same space, no need to get discouraged.

Any time spent on copy protection is time not spent on improving the product for the paying customers.

I find it unlikely that such copy protection would actually convert a non-paying user into a customer.

I also don't want to make the software network dependent in any way.

There are no current plans but never say never (the app is 100% AppKit, so porting means a full rewrite).

I wish I had the time to port it to all three desktop OSes.

Yeah, it was. After I finished working on the iOS app I was previously involved with, I needed to either find a job or make another app.

I was browsing StackOverflow and saw some cool looking ASCII diagrams, thinking to myself "How can I make these easily on macOS?". So that's how the idea was born.

I then spent about 1.5yrs from the initial commit until v1 release. Unfortunately, the financials didn't work out, so I had to find a job eventually.

But I'm still maintaining the app and do have longer term plans when my job situation changes.

[1] https://milen.me/software/clear-iphone-walkthrough/

Developer of the app here, happy to answer any questions.

We created the most popular (at the time) “all in one” app for macOS back in 2008 called EventBox [1].

It aggregated RSS, Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Reddit.

So it’s a very old idea that’s just coming back - like a lot of things, it goes in cycles.

We ended up selling the software to another company. My personal advice - never build your business on top of other companies data/APIs, they can cut you off at any point.

[1] https://milen.me/software/eventbox-walkthrough/

EDIT: Happy to see Milen's sibling comment about fixing breakage!! I realize you have to make a living -- is there a way to contribute for these new features (or is it a totally new app -- which is fine!).

I've considered the idea of letting other developers have access to the source code and help with the development. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure a way to make it fair - e.g., if someone starts contributing, do they start receiving a percentage of the proceeds? What's a fair percentage and what about multiple external contributors?

I could never come up with a workable model, so it's either fully open-source or proprietary. As I mentioned in another comment, I believe the way to go is an open data format which allows interoperability. This way there's no lock-in and competing apps (open or closed) can exist.

For what it's worth, the Monodraw data format is not secret, it's just compressed JSON. I haven't documented it because it's more of an implementation detail and I'd rather spend my very limited time on improving the product.

Hope that provides a bit more context.

A license wouldn't stop the unscrupulous people, they'll keep making clones of it and ignoring the license.

This means I have to start chasing any clones, engage legally and try to take them down. It's just not worth the time - I would rather spend the time on improving Monodraw instead.

The main requests have been for:

- Plaintext format (in progress) - Dark mode support for the main canvas (in progress) - Auto/Dynamic Layout - Table support - ANSI export