[Ipe-discuss] drawing many block diagrams

[Jan Hlavacek]

On Wed, 2007-12-19 at 21:11 -0600, Ryan Krauss wrote:
> I need to draw many block diagrams like the one attached.  Because of
> the number I need to create, I have previously used a program called
> diagraph which has a simple language for describing the block diagram.
>  It converts its input script to drawing commands in a Latex picture
> environment.  This works fairly well, but it is difficult to get the
> output to scale nicely.  That is my current problem: I am trying to
> use figures from my Ph.D. thesis in a two-column article, and it isn't
> going well.
> 
> I created the attached block diagram with ipe and it looks great and
> of course scales nicely.  But it takes a long time to create it.
> 
> The input script to diagraph used commands like
> R(1)
> c("$ v $")
> b(2,1,"$ G_p $")

It should be theoretically possible to write a script that would
translate the diagraph input into the ipe xml syntax. Unfortunately
diagraph does not seem to be an open source software, so the above
cannot be easily achieved by simply modifying existing code. 

As an alternative to diagraph, you may consider pgf/tikz package.  Look
at some samples at
http://www.fauskes.net/pgftikzexamples/tag/block-diagrams/

> The language is a
> bit weird at first, but it allows for very fast creation of many of
> these kinds of diagrams (creating the one ipe one by hand took 20
> minutes or so).

I understand that describing these diagrams in some sort of code and
having them automatically generated can be really fast.  On the other
hand, with use of Ipe snapping modes, I believe these diagrams can also
be created pretty fast.  I managed to get a docent approximation of the
one you attached in about 5 minutes.  Granted, it wasn't as pretty as
yours, mostly matching the size of the boxes with size of the labels was
a bit problematic, but I believe that with more practice I could be
drawing these pretty fast :)  

> 
> Is there an easy way to make ipe understand this kind of an input
> script and quickly create these kinds of diagrams?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ryan
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-- 
Jan Hlavacek (jhlavace at svsu.edu, 989-964-2004)
Department of Mathematics
Saginaw Valley State University
http://www.svsu.edu/~jhlavace/