Is there any good IDE or WYSIWYG editor for graphviz?

Question

Actually I had downloaded an GUI for graphviz (dont remember the site), which said that they had won an Apple Design Award. But that tool really only displays an *.dot file I created. That's it. It's just called "Graphviz"... I guess that there are better tools around for using the Graphviz technology.

I tried this one: link text

Although they say that they won an Apple Design Award, I really can't see any special GUI there. Very poor interface.

Answer 1

The current version of Graphviz.app does not contain the "external editor" button shown in rampion's screenshot above - Or the Render/Stop buttons, and it has replaced the "settings" button with "attributes". However, it can be used as described.

I downloaded 'graphviz-2.27.20101110.0545.pkg' from http://graphviz.org/Download_macos.php. Note that there are several places to download various things which call themselves Graphviz:

• http://graphviz.org/Download_macos.php
• http://graphviz.org/Download..php
• http://www.pixelglow.com/graphviz/download/

Use the first one, I chose the most recent development snapshot - A glance at the mailing lists (interest and devel) reveal that it's still pretty active, which you wouldn't know from the pixelglow sites that still have "Content coming soon" messages from 2004.

Anyways, when 2.27 is started, it throws up an "Open" dialog. Opening a .dot file will show a graph, but cancelling reduces you to nothing but a menu bar. Don't be dismayed, create a file with the text

graph graphname {
}

and call it something.dot.

Open that in Graphviz, and you get a GUI with an empty graph:

Type in some more text into the file, like this:

graph graphname {
  a -- b -- c -- d -- a;
  a -- c;
  b -- d;
}

The Graphviz window automatically updates when you save to show this:

There are a plethora of options in the "Attributes" toolbox, but it looks like they want you to edit the source by hand. I kind of expected "Add vertex" and "Add edge" buttons, and the ability to move vertices around, but that's not what it's about, apparently.

So, apparently, the WYSIWYG editor is your favorite text editor on one side of the screen, and Graphviz on the other. As far as an IDE goes, it looks like the best thing available right now is a printout of the documentation for the DOT format. Not everybody's idea of a WYSIWYG editor or IDE, but it probably works for active users.