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Graphviz

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RandyParedis edited this page Jan 31, 2020 · 1 revision

The original idea behind GraphDonkey was a way to simplify the usage of Graphviz and to allow for a set of shorthands that increase the user experience. Starting from version 0.2.0, this idea was extended to also allow for any graphical representation of textual denotations.

Nevertheless, Graphviz itself is one of the main core ideas and fallback systems within GraphDonkey, which is why it became accessible as a bundled plugin.

The plugin includes:

  • Syntax Highlighting and (LALR) Parsing for Graphviz-Files
  • A rendering engine for Graphviz (which can be used by other plugins. This engine allows:
    • Rendering in dot, neato, twopi, circo, fdp, sfdp, patchwork and osage
    • Exporting to numerous filetypes
    • Rendering AST structures to be shown
  • Customizable options

For the language and usage itself, please take a look at their documentation page. Everything you need can be found there.

How to Install?

Like any plugin, Graphviz comes with a set of requirements that need to be installed for it to work. These are, as always, only the Python PIP bindings that can be installed from the source itself. For security reasons, it is discouraged within GraphDonkey to install executables and packages that do not come from PIP (see this page for more info).

When installing this plugin, it is perfectly possible you get an error message saying "It seems Graphviz package is not installed on your system, but is required when using this plugin." When this occurs, it means GraphDonkey cannot find the executables needed for Graphviz to be ran. The executables can be obtained in the following ways:

Windows

  • Download a stable version from the official download page.
  • Add the bin directory of this version to the PATH variable:
    • Open Control Panel > System > Advanced
    • Click on Environment Variables...
    • Select Path and click Edit...
    • Add a new record with the absolute path to the bin folder
  • Restart every application to reload this variable.

Linux

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
    sudo apt-get install graphviz
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
    sudo add-apt-repository universe
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install graphviz

Don't find your installation target here, or did you spot a mistake? Let us know!

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