Native table element for open-source whiteboard and diagramming tools

other real project ••• trending

Excalidraw users have spent years asking for a real table element instead of hand-aligning rectangles and lines, and it is the tool's single most-reacted request, still collecting plus-ones this month. Teams that want tables on an infinite canvas are stuck choosing between proprietary SaaS like Miro and FigJam or hacking it together in the open tools. The opportunity is a true table shape or plugin for the open whiteboard ecosystem, or a diagram tool that ships tables natively.

builder note

Excalidraw has no real custom-element plugin API, so the pragmatic first win is a 'generate a table' helper that emits native Excalidraw rectangle and text groups bound together, rather than waiting for upstream to add a first-class table type.

landscape (3 existing solutions)

Tables are table-stakes in the paid whiteboards but absent from the open, embeddable ones, despite being the loudest Excalidraw request for years. The capability exists, just not where you can self-host or embed it.

Excalidraw No native table element. Users manually align rectangles and lines that drift and break on edit, which is what drove this to the top of the request list for four years.

tldraw The other major open and embeddable canvas SDK also ships no native table shape, only basic shapes, arrows, sticky notes, and a custom-shape extension API that each integrator would have to build tables on themselves.

Miro / FigJam Have polished native tables, but they are proprietary SaaS you cannot self-host or freely embed, and they carry per-seat pricing, so the capability is locked behind the closed tools.

sources (1)

other https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/issues/4847 "add a 'table' template so it can be easily added to the drawings" 2022-02-26

whiteboardexcalidrawdiagrammingtablesopen-source