Blockdiag - simple diagram images generator | Hacker News Reader

Blockdiag - simple diagram images generator

blockdiag.com

25 pointsmtrn7 comments

Does anyone know of other software that can be used to prepare network topology and rack layout diagrams from simple text files? Blockdiag seems to be one of the few options available so it'd be nice to see a focus on this "niche".

There's graphviz, which is pretty damn cool. http://www.graphviz.org/

Latex has some extension called tikz that from my impression seem to be the defacto standard for programmed drawing in latex. I havn't used it myself though.

There's also http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/ :D

I like simple tools like this. They fit both nicely into various workflows and into the 'Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface'-mindset.

It would be interesting if it could generate some tex/latex code :)

A quick and informal tool I have used over the years to create simple block diagrams is yEd. Since it is Java it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its free, but not open source.

yEd is a beautiful simple diagram-drawing tool but it's essentially "just" a slimmer cousin of e.g. Visio: Click to draw blocks, join them with arrows, drag things around with your mouse until everything looks nice.

I'm one of those obsessive-compulsives who can be completely infinite-looped by any product that lets you manually tweak the appearance of your diagram by hand and mouse. "Another 1/8 inch to the left, now a bit more spaced out, oops, now this part isn't centered, so pull this..."

blockdiag is different insofar as you specify the diagram by text only. It doesn't offer enough degrees of freedom to engage in the "creativity" that is so lethal to me. You tell it the names of your boxes and how you want them connected, and the software does the layout in a simple and unambiguous way.

I also highly appreciate that this allows me to source-control the diagram in text form and at what is probably the most abstract level possible.

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