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I\'m looking for a professional tool for OSX that using a DSL will allow me to w

ID: 659348 • Letter: I

Question

I'm looking for a professional tool for OSX that using a DSL will allow me to write code for a workflow and will generate a flowchart from the code. Something similar to this but not in-browser and providing a little more functionality (like compressing the chart).

This tool should:

Allow input of "code" as text that will influence the generation of the flow chart
Provide the ability to draw-to-file a flowchart graph from the code input
Provide manual modifications to the flowchart such as moving boxes to different positions, changing box size, changing box shape, etc.

Explanation / Answer

If you are familiar with LaTeX, then I recommend using the TikZ package in a standalone document class. The manual describes the syntax in detail, and you can find flowchart examples here.

Pros (matching your criteria):

Allows input of code using any text editor and can be built using your local LaTeX interpretor, or even an online tool
The resulting diagram is saved in PostScript/PDF format, which can be converted to high density graphics using ImageMagick convert -density 600x600 flowchart.pdf -quality 100 flowchart.png. This can by typed later in the command line, or added to the document class to output the image in a single step documentclass[convert={density=600,outext=.png}]{standalone}.
Provides control over the size and shape of the nodes using ikzstyle{} and the ability to fine tune positions by the millimeter (or your preferred unit, pt for example). You can also save your own style definitions in a separate file and input{} it into several documents, instead of copying or typing them all over again.

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