Creating diagrams in ASCII

Question

I am looking for a program which I can use to create ASCII diagrams such these:

    +---------+
    |         |                        +--------------+
    |   NFS   |--+                     |              |
    |         |  |                 +-->|   CacheFS    |
    +---------+  |   +----------+  |   |  /dev/hda5   |
                 |   |          |  |   +--------------+
    +---------+  +-->|          |  |
    |         |      |          |--+
    |   AFS   |----->| FS-Cache |
    |         |      |          |--+
    +---------+  +-->|          |  |
                 |   |          |  |   +--------------+
    +---------+  |   +----------+  |   |              |
    |         |  |                 +-->|  CacheFiles  |
    |  ISOFS  |--+                     |  /var/cache  |
    |         |                        +--------------+
    +---------+

It should preferably be a package available in Debian. The wonderful diagram displayed above is taken from the Linux kernel documentation. I cannot believe they were created by hand. There must be some tool to create them.

Answer 1

asciio

I've used asciio for several years. Many of the diagrams on this site I've created using asciio.

example

  vncviewer         .-,(  ),-.    
   __  _         .-(          )-.           gateway           vncserver 
  [__]|=|  ---->(    internet    )-------> __________ ------> ____   __ 
  /::/|_|        '-(          ).-'        [_...__...°]       |    | |==|
                     '-.( ).-'                               |____| |  |
                                                             /::::/ |__|

The GUI looks like this.

           

NOTE: Everything is driven from the right click menu as well as short-cut keys.

DrawIt

Using vim along with the DrawIt plugin you can also create basic diagrams. A good overview of how to install and use it is available here in this article titled: How To Create ASCII Drawings in Vim Editor (Draw Boxes, Lines, Ellipses, Arrows Inside Text File).

asciiflow

There's a website called asciiflow which is probably the easiest way to draw these types of diagrams.

   

JavE

Another tool, JavE, written in Java that can create ascii diagrams like this as well.

                                 ,'''''''''''''|
                                 | Controller  |
                                 |             |
                                 '`'i''''''''''
                                  ,'        `.
                                ,'            `.
                               -                -
                     ,'''''''''''''|      ,''''''''''''`.
                     |    Model    |______|    View     |
                     |             |      |             |
                      `''''''''''''       '`'''''''''''''

The GUI looks like this:

   

Resources

• Flytrap and Asciio
• Installing Asciio in Ubuntu
• App :: Asciio - Graphical user interface for ASCII Charts

Answer 2

Have a look at artist-mode or picture-mode for Emacs (see also this screencast). You might also want to check out ditaa.

Answer 3

I found another answer; I am not sure it is fully usable, but remember that GNU roff (groff) has a processor for the Pic language as well as an ascii postprocessor; thus you may have a try at something like that (if you use Linux, everything should probably already be installed). Write a file called test.roff containing:

.PS
box "box1";
line
box "box2";
.PE

Then type: groff -Tascii -p test.roff, and you should get:

+------+     +------+
|      +-----|      |
| box1 |     |box2  |
+------+     +------+

Regards.

Answer 4

Maybe you will be interested in graph-easy.

Example:

   echo "[ Bonn ] -- car --> [ Berlin ], [ Ulm ]" | graph-easy

produces:

    +--------+  car   +-----+
    |  Bonn  | -----> | Ulm |
    +--------+        +-----+
      |
      | car
      v
    +--------+
    | Berlin |
    +--------+

You can install it with the following commands:

wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/T/TE/TELS/graph/Graph-Easy-0.64.tar.gz
tar -xzf Graph-Easy-0.64.tar.gz
cd Graph-Easy-0.64
perl Makefile.PL
make test
sudo make install
PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/libexec/perl5.12/sitebin/graph-easy

(Note the version numbers in the two uppermost and the last line - they may change)

Some nice screenshots are available on the pages of lddot and dothost (because both tools are wrappers for graph-easy).

Answer 5

For anyone using a Mac (not the original poster) there's a very nice tool called Monodraw. Of course you're going to pay a few bucks for the fact that it's highly polished and powerful and intuitive, but if this is something you do often, it's a handy tool to have available and $10 is peanuts compared to the time you'll save. If you don't do this often, there's a free trial available, so you're all set. It can even export to SVG

No, I don't work for the company. I'm just a happy user.

Answer 6

The ADia project aims to render ASCII diagrams using a human-readable language:

diagram: Foo
sequence:
foo -> bar: Hello World!

Output

 DIAGRAM: Foo                             

 +-----+             +-----+
 | foo |             | bar |
 +-----+             +-----+
    |                   |
    |~~~Hello World!~~~>|
    |                   |
    |<------------------|
    |                   |
 +-----+             +-----+
 | foo |             | bar |
 +-----+             +-----+

Read the documentation or Try the live demo page at github.io.

Answer 7

I just used https://textik.com/ and it worked great.