openpress-diagram-drawing

open-press Diagram Drawing

This skill owns diagram semantics, not visual skin. It decides what the diagram should show and what text belongs inside the figure.

Core Rule

Draw the relationship, not the explanation.

Figure bodies may contain only spatially meaningful information: object labels, pointer names, field names, axes, legends, short state labels, node values, NULL, and operation-order labels.

Move reasons, warnings, edge cases, teaching commentary, and interpretation into surrounding prose or captions.

Responsibilities

Choose whether a concept needs a diagram, table, code block, or prose.
Define nodes, links, arrows, states, labels, and before/after relationships.
Keep figure text lean and connected to position or direction.
Prevent diagrams from containing answers, production notes, or caption-like sentences.

Boundaries

openpress owns validation/render command choice and the source/generated boundary.
openpress-create-pages owns surrounding page explanation, caption wording, page visual skin, typography, CSS, and component implementation.
openpress-create-slide owns slide visual skin, slide layouts, reusable UI primitives, and deck-level narrative around slide diagrams.
openpress-create-pages owns learner-facing practice flow for page-based teaching material.

Workflow

Identify the diagram job: comparison, process state, relationship snapshot, before/after, operation sequence, traversal trace, or data representation.
Choose the surface:
- diagram for links, ownership, direction, state changes;
- table for dense comparisons or many trace rows;
- code block for exact syntax.
Draw from semantics first; let style follow.
Check whether the diagram can be understood without explanatory sentences inside the visual.

When To Read References

Read references/diagram-patterns.md for linked-list, circular-list, doubly-list, stack, queue, polynomial, sparse-structure, and tree drawing patterns.