How to create a picture / diagram from text?

Question

I am trying to create several diagrams that will be published online on my website as PNG images. I do not want to use any image editor such as Photoshop or similar. Instead, I would like to use some plain text format and a compiler. The only tool I know so far is Graphviz / DOT, which has certain disadvantages. What are the alternatives?

Answer 1

Not knowing exactly what types of diagrams you would like to create, and which disadvantages of Graphviz make you look for an alternative, I'm not sure if the following alternatives are applicable to your needs:

Web Sequence Schema creates diagrams from text files and an API is available. You can also buy a server version, which will be hosted on the internal network, if required.

yUML also creates diagrams from text, and also has a license for local use.

Another python-based block / sequence / activity / network diagram tool is blockdiag .

Answer 2

I am also involved in finding alternatives to DSL → diagrams.

My list:

• Graphviz (as mentioned)
• ePiX
• PGF/Tikz ( LaTeX)
• JavaScript,
  • Processing.js
  • Raphaël

JavaScript PNG. ; -)

Answer 3

A fairly general solution would be to write SVG images and transfer them to the rasterizer (e.g. rsvg ).

Answer 4

I recommend http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/ , which is very useful for UML sketching and has been integrated with CKeditor, TiddlyWiki, TinyMCE Editor.