What do you use to create flowcharts?

I'm curious what tools people found useful for building flowcharts. Obviously, MS Visio and OmniGraffle come to mind, but both of them feel so bloated and tend to emphasize the formatting / printing side of documents and less, helping to organize the actual logic. Is there anything else developers recommend?

I hope to find something fairly simple that will allow me to dump flowcharts on the fly when I work through complex logic. I do not care about formatting or fonts, etc., Just something that would help me keep my logic organized when I work through it. Even something that could organize the diagram and just let me indicate where to insert, and what to check, etc.

Any OS will be fine, although I personally tend to OS X applications, as this has recently become my main working environment.

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10 answers

Although you list it as bloated, I still use OmniGraffle .

For a quick block diagram, a sequence of boxes with lines to the magnets in the boxes is enough, but the rest of the formatting options are good for the future. I find that any flowchart I use for drawing usually ends up in a document somewhere. Even when I'm just trying to figure out some kind of complex code, I get a one page document that tries to explain this code for the next poor schmuck that I have to dig.

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graphviz.

:

digraph finite_state_machine {
    rankdir=LR;
    size="8,5"
    node [shape = doublecircle]; LR_0 LR_3 LR_4 LR_8;
    node [shape = circle];
    LR_0 -> LR_2 [ label = "SS(B)" ];
    LR_0 -> LR_1 [ label = "SS(S)" ];
    LR_1 -> LR_3 [ label = "S($end)" ];
    LR_2 -> LR_6 [ label = "SS(b)" ];
    LR_2 -> LR_5 [ label = "SS(a)" ];
    LR_2 -> LR_4 [ label = "S(A)" ];
    LR_5 -> LR_7 [ label = "S(b)" ];
    LR_5 -> LR_5 [ label = "S(a)" ];
    LR_6 -> LR_6 [ label = "S(b)" ];
    LR_6 -> LR_5 [ label = "S(a)" ];
    LR_7 -> LR_8 [ label = "S(b)" ];
    LR_7 -> LR_5 [ label = "S(a)" ];
    LR_8 -> LR_6 [ label = "S(b)" ];
    LR_8 -> LR_5 [ label = "S(a)" ];
}

:

alt text http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery/directed/fsm.png

http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery/directed/fsm.png

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? ?

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Dia Linux. , , , .

OS X dia.darwinports.com, .

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Open Office . , - .

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-, , - , Powerpoint. , .

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Microsoft Visio 2003, , , .

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-, . , A3.

, Visio, .

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OmniGraffle ? .. 14- , ?

yEd.

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I do not use it for programming related tasks, but I do not understand why this will not work. Mindjet Mindmanager is a great tool for creatively displaying ideas. (It can be quite expensive)

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