I'm not sure where you got the impression that the paid layout engine is the primary backend for it.
We set out to make our own layout engine, which we charge for, true. However to say it outcompetes the efforts of all open-source ones including ones used by Graphviz (dagre) and university researchers (ELK) is quite the compliment, and not one that we've ever made ourselves. There are simply different use cases for each: https://d2lang.com/tour/layouts .
In fact we specifically de-weight our own layout engine, making it a separate install and not referenced anywhere in the D2 project. The vast majority of D2 users aren't paying a penny.
And like another comment says, we make it abundantly clear our own layout engine is not open-source everywhere that it's mentioned.
Your claim that this is a commercial post is also unfounded. I opened HN today as a reader and was surprised to see this post.
> I'm not sure where you got the impression that the paid layout engine is the primary backend for it.
I got this impression once I failed to reproduce the examples in your documentation with free backend.
> However to say it outcompetes the efforts of all open-source ones including ones used by
> Graphviz (dagre) and university researchers (ELK) is quite the compliment,
I did not mean to say that your engine outcompetes the open-source ones, but rather that d2 gives inferior results with them.
> Your claim that this is a commercial post is also unfounded.
I keep seeing thinly disguised d2 promos on the front page and this raises a few questions. This is fairly niche product, and far from unique in its capabilities. Why would it keep showing up among highest-ranked posts?
> I got this impression once I failed to reproduce the examples in your documentation with free backend.
This is easily verifiably false. All the examples have direct links to the playground to reproduce, except the few explicitly called out in the layout section as belonging to TALA's. If you still claim this, simply provide a link to an example that doesn't explicitly say it's made with TALA in the docs (d2lang.com).
> I did not mean to say that your engine outcompetes the open-source ones, but rather that d2 gives inferior results with them.
I'm not sure you understand the role layout engines have. All languages like PlantUML etc just abstractly represent nodes and connections and choose some styles for them. The rest is layout engine.
> Why would it keep showing up among highest-ranked posts?
You're engaging in conspiracy theories and there's nothing further I can prove short of an HN mod telling you these are legitimate unrelated posters and upvoters.
It was unmaintained for a long time (maybe considered done implementing the algorithm it set out to), but recently a Google engineer has revived it: https://github.com/dagrejs/dagre
We set out to make our own layout engine, which we charge for, true. However to say it outcompetes the efforts of all open-source ones including ones used by Graphviz (dagre) and university researchers (ELK) is quite the compliment, and not one that we've ever made ourselves. There are simply different use cases for each: https://d2lang.com/tour/layouts .
In fact we specifically de-weight our own layout engine, making it a separate install and not referenced anywhere in the D2 project. The vast majority of D2 users aren't paying a penny.
And like another comment says, we make it abundantly clear our own layout engine is not open-source everywhere that it's mentioned.
Your claim that this is a commercial post is also unfounded. I opened HN today as a reader and was surprised to see this post.