Announcing diagrams 0.5

I am pleased to announce the release of version 0.5 of diagrams, a full-featured framework and embedded domain-specific language for declarative drawing. Check out the gallery for examples of what it can do!

Highlights of this release include:

• A new diagrams-contrib package of user-contributed modules, which so far contains code for tree drawing, Apollonian gaskets, planar tilings, "wrapped" layout, and turtle graphics.
• Experimental support for animation, built on top of the new active library.
• Numerous small additions and improvements, including more general rounded rectangle shapes and better text support.
• Much better performance in some common situations, such as laying out a very long list of diagrams using ‘cat’ and related combinators.
• Added support for GHC 7.4.

See the release notes for complete details, and the diagrams wiki for help migrating code from 0.4 to 0.5 (changes should be minimal).

Try it out

For the truly impatient:

cabal install gtk2hs-buildtools
cabal install diagrams

Diagrams is supported under GHC 6.12, 7.0, 7.2, and 7.4. However, getting cairo to build can be tricky on some platforms; see the diagrams wiki for more information and workarounds regarding specific platforms. (A new native SVG backend is in the works, targeted for the 0.6 release.)

To get started with diagrams, read the quick tutorial, which will introduce you to the fundamentals of the framework.

For those who are even less impatient but want to really dig in and use the power features, read the user manual.

Get involved

Subscribe to the project mailing list, and/or come hang out in the #diagrams IRC channel on freenode.org for help and discussion. Make some diagrams. Fix some bugs. Submit your cool examples for inclusion in the gallery or your cool code for inclusion in the diagrams-contrib package!

Happy diagramming!

Brought to you by the diagrams team:

• Peter Hall
• Ian Ross
• Michael Sloan
• Ryan Yates
• Brent Yorgey

with contributions from:

• Sam Griffin
• Claude Heiland-Allen
• John Lato
• Vilhelm Sjöberg
• Luite Stegeman
• Kanchalai Suveepattananont
• Scott Walck