Visio exporting!
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Visio exporting!
by Glen Low
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Dear All
After a few weeks of sweating out Microsoft's arcane file formats, Graphviz can now export to Visio VDX. [inspirational picture to follow in next email in case AT&T listservs complain] It's deployed as a render gvplugin DLL etc. and generates output via -Tvdx:visio or simply -Tvdx. It doesn't have any system dependencies except for C++, and is meant to build correctly on Mac, Windows and Linux. It's not in any built package but you can build it from the configure line with ./configure --with-visio. Even though I've tried to cover as much ground as possible, I'd still consider it experimental. The primary use case would be autogenerating graphs with Graphviz (or Instaviz), then using Visio to edit the result. Thus, the plugin attempts to preserve the semantics of the graph, as opposed to doing a pixel perfect rendition. in particular: - Graphviz nodes become Visio shapes. Complex nodes become grouped Visio shapes. - Graphviz edges become Visio connectors. In particular the connectors reflow when the shapes are moved and do path planning in Visio, although obviously the algorithms are different. - Graphviz arrows become Visio arrows, which is an attribute of the line and not a separate polygon. - Graphviz text is part of the relevant component instead of a separate object, as expected in Visio usage. Justification etc. carries across too. - Graphviz hyperlinks are part of the relevant component instead of free-standing areas. You can still use -Tsvg to produce pixel perfect renditions for Visio, but the objects are not preserved. BUGS etc. - Doesn't handle multiple locations for text e.g. tables, head/tail labels. Everything gets lumped into one text area. - Edges don't end up flush to the node. In Visio, the arrow is part of the edge line, not extended past the edge line as with Graphviz. Dunno what to do about this... - Text outside of components not handled. E.g. graph labels. - Fonts not handled -- it would be complicated to convert Postscript font names into something Windows can grok, me thinks. - Currently uses the first graphic (bezier, polyline etc.) from within an edge to represent the edge, discarding the rest. This will probably screw up tables. Unfortunately Visio connectors don't reflow etc. when grouped with anything else, and I don't really know how to figure out what part of the edge is the actual edge and/or primary line (in the case of multiple lines) and/or not the table graphics... HOW YOU CAN HELP - See if it builds on your machine and operating system. - Try opening the exported output in Visio, version 2003 onwards. You can get free 60-day trials and in-browser viewers here: - If you have Instaviz http://instaviz.com, a Mac running Leopard (10.5) and a PC running Visio 2003+, contact me directly and I can send you a Mac application for testing. Cheers, Glen Low --- pixelglow software | simply brilliant stuff www.pixelglow.com aim: pixglen twitter: pixelglow _______________________________________________ graphviz-interest@... https://mailman.research.att.com/mailman/listinfo/graphviz-interest |
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