Text -> Diagram Tool

Question

I'm looking for an diagram tool for producing diagrams from text. I only really need sequence and state type diagrams for now, but I'm curious as to what people would recommend? I need something which is standalone, not a web based tool that works on Linux, OSX and Windows.

Ditaa is a good example of such a tool - http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/ — Jonathan Holloway, Apr 22 '10 at 17:28
So you want something that takes text and produces drawings? Or do you want something that produces ASCII art drawings? — Joey, Apr 22 '10 at 17:57
Ok a little misleading, I'm looking for a tool that takes ASCII text and outputs images. — Jonathan Holloway, Apr 22 '10 at 18:05
Check out http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2692985/text-diagram-tool for the reverse. i.e. generating text diagrams — asitk, Jul 25 '12 at 07:18
An exhaustive list of such tools can be founde here: http://modeling-languages.com/content/uml-tools#textual — Jordi Cabot, Apr 23 '10 at 09:41

score 20 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 19 '13 at 19:10

20

I'm not positive what you mean by "producing diagrams from text", but if you mean a tool where diagrams are specified by a text file, Graphviz is good. If you mean something that literally converts ascii art like

+--------+   +-------+    +-------+
|        | --+ ditaa +--> |       |
|  Text  |   +-------+    |diagram|
|Document|   |!magic!|    |       |
|     {d}|   |       |    |       |
+---+----+   +-------+    +-------+
    :                         ^
    |       Lots of work      |
    +-------------------------+

to a graphic:

enter image description here

You can try ditaa (that ascii art is from their website, so it's a good example of the input format it expects)

edited Dec 19 '13 at 19:10

Ross Rogers

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answered Apr 22 '10 at 17:21

Michael Mrozek

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+1 Ah good old dot; had a professor in college that loved that tool for BNF Expression Trees – SwDevMan81 Apr 22 '10 at 18:24
Any online tool like Graphviz? – Sobiaholic Mar 11 '14 at 23:09
@Sobiaholic, I found on https://xosh.org/text-to-diagram/ online tool for Graphviz - http://www.webgraphviz.com/ – WeGa Dec 20 '21 at 07:45

Gabriel Ščerbák · Answer 2 · 2010-10-18T17:20:29.930

13

Look at PlantUML, LaTeX+MetaUML, sdedit, TextUML, yUML, ... There is a plenty of quite good tools.

edited Oct 18 '10 at 17:20

answered Apr 22 '10 at 21:47

Gabriel Ščerbák

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PlantUML looks pretty good, thanks... – Jonathan Holloway Apr 22 '10 at 22:37
I'm the author of the **PlantUML Gizmo**, which is a free add-on for [Google Docs](https://sites.google.com/site/plantumlgizmo) or [Microsoft Word](https://code.google.com/p/plantuml-word-add-in-vsto/). It allows using PlantUML in those documents. – Fuhrmanator Aug 22 '14 at 00:09

score 11 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 19 '13 at 19:20

I recommend TextDiagram http://weidagang.github.com/text-diagram/. It creates UML sequence diagram from pure text.

Example input

object April Todd Monad
note left of April: Lunch is ready
April->Todd: Todd, what are you doing?
note right of Todd: Programming @_@
Todd->April: Well, I'm programming.
April->Monad: And you?
Monad->April: I'm reading book.
April->Monad: Good boy!
note right of Monad: Smile ^_^

produces:

               +-------+                       +-------+               +-------+
               | April |                       | Todd  |               | Monad |
               +-------+                       +-------+               +-------+
-----------------\ |                               |                       |
| Lunch is ready |-|                               |                       |
------------------ |                               |                       |
                   |                               |                       |
                   | Todd, what are you doing?     |                       |
                   |------------------------------>|                       |
                   |                               | ------------------\   |
                   |                               |-| Programming @_@ |   |
                   |                               | -------------------   |
                   |                               |                       |
                   |        Well, I'm programming. |                       |
                   |<------------------------------|                       |
                   |                               |                       |
                   | And you?                      |                       |
                   |------------------------------------------------------>|
                   |                               |                       |
                   |                               |     I'm reading book. |
                   |<------------------------------------------------------|
                   |                               |                       |
                   | Good boy!                     |                       |
                   |------------------------------------------------------>|
                   |                               |                       | ------------\
                   |                               |                       |-| Smile ^_^ |
                   |                               |                       | -------------
                   |                               |                       |

@slm it's moved to http://weidagang.github.com/text-diagram/ — Dagang, Jan 01 '13 at 16:28
Any idea if this supports multithreading? I have a feeling the answer is no :( — Sridhar Sarnobat, Sep 12 '19 at 18:55

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered May 12 '11 at 08:05

8

I'd recomment PlantUML. It is an excellent tools that lets you draw all kinds of UML diagrams from simple textual specification.

answered May 12 '11 at 08:05

Barun

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 28 '11 at 20:50

0

EventStudio supports generation of sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams from text input.

answered May 28 '11 at 20:50

Sandeep

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Text -> Diagram Tool

5 Answers5