Issue No.03 - May/June (2009 vol.26)
Diomidis Spinellis , Athens University of Economics and Business
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MS.2009.63
A drawing is often the best way to describe a large, complex artifact. In software development, you can easily derive pictures from code through tools that automate diagram creation. With the Graphviz tools you can draw directed and undirected relations between elements using a simple declarative language. Pic features a procedural drawing language that lets you define your own domain-specific drawing language. Gnuplot can plot data and functions in a wide variety of 2D and 3D styles. Finally, you can plot geographical data through the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) or by generating KML files. You can obtain additional leverage by having one graphics tool or script generate output for another and by using the appropriate output format.
diagrams, charts, drawings, UML, Graphviz, dot, neato, twopi, groff, pic, gnuplot, GMT, KML, UMLGraph, ImageMagick, GhostView, Inkscape
Diomidis Spinellis, "Drawing Tools", IEEE Software, vol.26, no. 3, pp. 12-13, May/June 2009, doi:10.1109/MS.2009.63