Seeking a chart program to generate charts by specifying elements, not coordinate

Posted by Gold-Plant8923@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 12 comments

I'm looking for a program or tool that can generate simple charts where I specify only the elements (circles, rectangles, lines, arrows, text). I want the tool to automatically adjust the size and position of these elements.

For example, I'd like to be able to input something like this:

ellipse
    vertical {
        ta text "a"
        tb text "b"
        tc text "c"
    }
text "f"
ellipse
    vertical {
        t1 text "1"
        t2 text "2"
        t3 text "3"
    }
arrow ta -> t3
arrow tb -> t1
arrow tc -> t2ellipse
    vertical {
        ta text "a"
        tb text "b"
        tc text "c"
    }
text "f"
ellipse
    vertical {
        t1 text "1"
        t2 text "2"
        t3 text "3"
    }
arrow ta -> t3
arrow tb -> t1
arrow tc -> t2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_function#/media/File:Inverse_Function.png

ellipse
    ellipse
        ellipse
            ellipse
                text "N"
            text "Z" right
        text "Q" right
    text "R" rightellipse
    ellipse
        ellipse
            ellipse
                text "N"
            text "Z" right
        text "Q" right
    text "R" right

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onyxleopard@reddit

Have you tried https://graphviz.org/ ?

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Gold-Plant8923@reddit (OP)

I've used Graphviz. I was looking to get insights from other users. Thank you.

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onyxleopard@reddit

There’s also https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/.

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Gold-Plant8923@reddit (OP)

Thank you. I checked out the homepage, and it seems capable of producing fancy visuals from specified diagram types.

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onyxleopard@reddit

You creat injection, subjection, etc. diagrams like this example: https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/try/?examples=set-potatoes/non-surjection-not-epimorphism

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Gold-Plant8923@reddit (OP)

If the diagram format you want to create is supported, Penrose seems like it would be easier to write. I understand now that the choice of tool depends on the scope of the diagram I want to describe. Thank you.

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