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Anyone have recommendations for a simple text-based flowchart specification format? Something that a human can read and easily understand in plaintext, but can

Anyone have recommendations for a simple text-based flowchart specification format? Something that a human can read and easily understand in plaintext, but can also be rendered as a graphic? The current solutions we have at my work are extremely difficult to use with VCS. I've looked at Mermaid [0], but it is pretty limiting in its feature set. I typically use draw.io/mxGraph [1] when I'm making diagrams and flowcharts, but the XML-based file format is pretty overwhelming for humans to read. [0] https://mermaidjs.github.io https://mermaidjs.github.io [1] https://github.com/jgraph/mxgraph https://github.com/jgraph/mxgraph

gclawes 7y ago
These were posted on HN a few days ago: https://avdi.codes/tools-for-turning-descriptions-into-diagrams/ https://avdi.codes/tools-for-turning-descriptions-into-diagr...
steve-s 7y ago
GraphViz?
- graphviz 7y ago
  What?
pjc50 7y ago
There's always the ancient "Pic" language by Brian Kernighan, e.g.: http://mtorrest.sitios.ing.uc.cl/downloads/latex/flowchart.pdf http://mtorrest.sitios.ing.uc.cl/downloads/latex/flowchart.p...
justasitsounds 7y ago
plantUML[0] may be what you're looking for, specifically the activity diagrams[1].I've been using it extensively for sequence diagrams (has more features than websequencediagrams.com). Most recently I've been using this C4 architecture diagrams extension[2]. There's a VSCode preview extension[3] and a docker image[4] for running a plantUML server locally that lets me create and share version controlled diagrams with my colleagues easily. I especially like that there's an ascii renderer for the sequence diagrams that makes embedding them in Readme's very easy [0] http://plantuml.com/ http://plantuml.com/ [1] http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram-beta http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram-beta [2] https://github.com/RicardoNiepel/C4-PlantUML https://github.com/RicardoNiepel/C4-PlantUML [3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jebbs.plantuml https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jebbs.pl... [4] https://hub.docker.com/r/plantuml/plantuml-server/ https://hub.docker.com/r/plantuml/plantuml-server/

gclawes 7y ago

These were posted on HN a few days ago: https://avdi.codes/tools-for-turning-descriptions-into-diagrams/ https://avdi.codes/tools-for-turning-descriptions-into-diagr...

steve-s 7y ago

GraphViz?

graphviz 7y ago
What?

pjc50 7y ago

There's always the ancient "Pic" language by Brian Kernighan, e.g.: http://mtorrest.sitios.ing.uc.cl/downloads/latex/flowchart.pdf http://mtorrest.sitios.ing.uc.cl/downloads/latex/flowchart.p...

justasitsounds 7y ago

plantUML[0] may be what you're looking for, specifically the activity diagrams[1].I've been using it extensively for sequence diagrams (has more features than websequencediagrams.com). Most recently I've been using this C4 architecture diagrams extension[2]. There's a VSCode preview extension[3] and a docker image[4] for running a plantUML server locally that lets me create and share version controlled diagrams with my colleagues easily. I especially like that there's an ascii renderer for the sequence diagrams that makes embedding them in Readme's very easy [0] http://plantuml.com/ http://plantuml.com/ [1] http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram-beta http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram-beta [2] https://github.com/RicardoNiepel/C4-PlantUML https://github.com/RicardoNiepel/C4-PlantUML [3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jebbs.plantuml https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jebbs.pl... [4] https://hub.docker.com/r/plantuml/plantuml-server/ https://hub.docker.com/r/plantuml/plantuml-server/