Re: Formats /flowcharts

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Mon, 2007-09-17 at 13:06 -0400, Amanda B Hickman wrote:
> I'm working with Graph::Easy[1] to define a series of flowcharts. I'd
> like to stick with Graph::Easy because it is, um, easy. It is easy to
> organize data and define styles, mostly, and easy to keep my data
> structured neatly.
>
> Graph::Easy's layouter, however, has enough limitations that I do really
> need to move the output into a gui tool to organize the layouts for
> printing.
>
> I can output either graphML or SVG (as well as a few other less useful
> formats like ASCII and HTML), but I can't seem to figure out whether or
> how to import this output into dia.
>
> I can pull the SVG output into Inkscape[2] and ungroup the collection of
> shapes and arrows that make up the charts, but Inkscape doesn't (unless
> I'm missing something?) understand nodes and lines in a particularly
> helpful way. I can place the SVG output in Dia, but only as a single
> image, not as a collection of many images, and Dia doesn't seem to
> recognize the SVG data as a group that could be ungrouped.
>
> Has anyone worked with GraphML output in Dia? Is there something I could
> be doing to help Dia read SVG files better?

Unless there's something I missed in my 5-minute perusal, GraphML does
not define size and position of its elements.  Dia is not going to
re-implement graph layout in order to understand GraphML.

However, Graph::Easy provides output for GraphViz, which in turn has Dia
output support.  Trying one of their samples, they make nice Dot output,
but Dot crashes when trying to make Dia output.  Grumph.  Going through
Fig doesn't crash, but I haven't found a way to convert Fig's
approximated splines yet.

-Lars