But why be exclusive? Why not "Chart language for computer programs to generate"?
I don't want to use an agent at all, but i wouldn't mind generating some charts with an easy-to-generate markup language...
But why be exclusive? Why not "Chart language for computer programs to generate"?
I don't want to use an agent at all, but i wouldn't mind generating some charts with an easy-to-generate markup language...
But for that we already have mermaid.js (and its precursor Graphviz/dot).
The only reason to use this instead of existing, mature ones designed for humans is if you are an AI agent.
Graphviz and mermaid are a shitshow.
anything more than their own handpicked examples and you're better off using d3 or yfiles. layering, clustering, boundaries, rearranging are all basic needs for text to diagrams. None support it.
Both suck at being any good for rendering diagrams from readable structured text. There is a gap to be addressed.
I find it lacks some easy way to do alignments or grouping, which makes editing frustrating. Could be a good language re-design opportunity.
yes and that led me to a more fundamental question : is it even possible for an easy way to do fine grained adjustments. The finer granularity brings complexity. that makes it unreadable (especially for the untrained) and hence set aside and forgotten. The other way is to narrow down and focus on a well defined subset of problems.
either way the number of people willing or compelled to learn it will be tiny. and it hence becomes a niche, perfect for a long-term side project but with no real return.
my conclusion was to stop looking and use D3 or custom code ( good looking charts for humans).
this project is trying to do the same, balance verbosity in text with granularity in the charts with a narrowish usecase : agent consumption.
That's the best option for now. But it can also be frustrating to ask AI to do small edits on D3 just to fix some idioms (like switching order etc) and they kept messing up with other stuff accidentally. Thus I still believe have a language with native representation for these diagram concepts would be helpful.
Good news is that AI do make new language a bit more accessible than before! If your agents can use it well and you can steer easily, it will naturally be good adoption.
Why can’t AIs generate for the “existing, mature ones?” Like the other commenter said, I’m not sure I get the “this is totally for AI” marketing. Why can’t AI use the existing ones and why can’t humans use this?
the design here has some constructs (i.e., semantic types) that AI can use better than human at generation time; and then the generated spec can be easy for user to edit since there is no need for hard-coded low-level parameters!
its not marketing to you, its marketing to agents looking for tools to use
I'd ask the question in reverse too. Why not let the AI agent use mermaid.js/graphviz/dot?
Presumably Microsoft thinks this one is better. Why? And why would that answer be any different for a human vs an LLM?
Mermaid looks terrible.
It is only better than nothing for the purpose of showing it to people whether produced by an LLM, by a human, or by both.
Your employees may just accept the internal slop, but at some point, you have to show your charts to your customer.
Doesn't that depend on the style that you apply to it?
No? I don't think there is a way to meaningfully change the layout for non trivial charts?
Careful, they'll spring something XML-derived on us.
Because these are completely different requirements.
Which are what, exactly?