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Closed 10 years ago.
What kind of software do you use to draw diagram for your presentation and report?
Suppose you want to draw a diagram to illustrate the TCP hand shake.
I use visio, but the outcome is too plain.
Is there any free software out there can draw diagrams better? Which can also have some 3D shapes or shadows?
Dia for Windows
gadwin
Gliffy
DiaCze
SmartDraw
All the best man.
Inkscape is a free vector drawing program that will make drawings as elaborate as you want them to be. And while it's probably not what you're looking for, I can't recommend TiKZ (www.texample.net) highly enough. It's what I use for everything nowadays.
If you want beautiful diagrams, be prepared to work for them. Recently, I've been using Illustrator, but that isn't exactly free. I have used Inkscape in the past and it can work very well.
I've filched the company tablet PC for this single reason - so that I can hand-draw diagrams directly in my (OneNote) documents. All the advantages of quick sketches which can be rapidly changed/printed and still have typed text (written text is not a legible option in my case)
A whiteboard and a digital camera (maybe in your phone) works really great!
It's PowerPoint 2007, but you have to using basic shapes (with 3D and shadow) to create diagrams. It's possible, but it's hard work, if you want nice looking.
And same nice background for slides. Different for section head and for other slides.
I think you should save yourself a lot of time and look for images on the web, rather than drawing them yourself. Try searching http://images.google.com for what you need (shapes or whatever) and piece them together with a simple paint program or The GIMP.
If you are not publishing the document, and only attempting to explain information to coworkers, you can find (steal) plenty of well-designed images intended to explain networking concepts.
Otherwise your presentation should probably be in PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress, or some such presentation tool.
Good old Microsoft Paint. Or, Paintbrush on my Mac.
Keeping it simple works for me. As many colors and shapes as I want, with easy canvas features, and nothing over the top like shadows etc.
I've found the best of the "free" apps to be Paint.NET. Does everything I've ever need an image creation and editing app to do, well supported by the developers and the community and has a huge userbase that has created a bunch of plugins to expand it's features. As a Photoshop/Illustrator lite, it's as good as they come.
You can use Creatly. It's a web based tool simular to Visio. They have a free trial, so you can just check it out.
Related
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I would like to make a program that would offer tethered operation for a digital video/still camera (consumer cameras other than DSLR), so that you could plug the camera into a computer (USB or other) and use it's functions (take photo, record video, zoom, focus, etc.).
The intended platform for now is Linux.
As far as I know, no manufacturers offer an SDK for their products, except a few who do (Canon, Olympus, Nikon), but only for their DSLRs.
I'm not new to c++ but I haven't worked on many projects with it. However, I am completely new to OpenCV, and I do not yet know the capabilities of this library.
To test the opencv build and my configuration I've made a simple app which just takes the stream from the webcam and displays it on a form. (using cvCreateCameraCapture)
Would this work with a digital camera or camcorder? I'm guessing they would have to have a "webcam mode" available, but that's not so common (at least not in camcorders).
How about firewire or are there any other HD capable connectors? Would they be recognizable by OpenCV?
I would like to stay away from HDMI and capturing devices if possible (extra cost).
So i guess my question is, if anyone had any experience with a project like this: what would be the preferred camera specifications for such usage (what features)? And are there any libraries available to ease my troubles :)
I'm looking into libgphoto2 as well. And if need be I would try something like writing a driver for the camera, if possible using libusb, but I honestly do not know where to start with that.
Sniffing the USB port (with their native drivers), what to do with that information afterwards?
I would be very grateful if someone could shed some light on that subject as well - how to get started, any good books to recommend on writing driver software?
Also, I am aware that Linux Kino offers similar functions so I could check out the source, but is it only for IEEE 1394?
One last question, how could I achieve that the camera starts up automatically on computer start up, given that it's connected through USB?
Sorry for the long post,
Thank you and best wishes!
Matekk
To start a program that talks with an USB-conneected device you add an udev rule for it, like this. You may want to use ATTR{device} and ATTR{vendor} and not KERNEL as shown in the example.
As for the cameras themselves, older Canon P&S cameras can do tethered shooting. Some are supported by gphoto. If there's no Linux support for your camera, but it is able to work tethered in other OSes, you will have to reverse-engineer support. Yes, issue commands from the supplied software, sniff USB ports, figure out message formats, make your program write/read messages via libusb2 (or perhaps add support to libgphoto2).
Another possibility is an Android-based camera (not a phone but a real P&S). Nikon and Samsung both make these things. There's probably no need to reverse-engineer anything, but you may have to write an Android app for the camera. There are some apps out there that can do this but work via WiFi/3G, so this should be possible for USB too.
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Is there some flowchart diagram tool that would (or could be made to) integrate with a self-hosted wiki?
Requirements:
basic functionality (e.g., drawing some boxes and some arrows)
would strongly prefer it to be visual (i.e., not written out in text that then gets converted)
allows for dynamic editing
it is important that the tool can be integrated into the wiki (e.g., as an extra panel somewhere)
can be run from a personal server
free
I've looked around at other threads here concerning a diagram tool, but they are either desktop applications, online ones which reside on third-party servers, or cost money.
[Edit] Thanks for the responses, but I would like them to be dynamically editable (I've added this to the requirements). What I mean is that I would like to integrate (or run it from a private server) some online collaborative diagramming tool. While I could create a JPG of something made in Graphviz and upload it, this is not easily editable. I would have to upload the source file somewhere, which someone would have to download and edit, then upload the new JPG.
Graphviz dot diagrams can be embedded in some wikis. Unfortunately for your requirements, it's text that gets converted. It's fairly simple to learn and use though.
http://www.graphviz.org/
EDIT: It's free / open source.
I've been looking for something similar - collaborative flowcharts in a wiki. The most interesting so far is this Mediawiki extension: http://www.flowchartwiki.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki is the closest thing I've seen. It's more of a previsualization tool however for application mockups, though I'm not sure if this is the kind of tool you're looking for.
It is free if you qualify under their licensing.
Another option would be using Mediawiki with the Dia extension.
I like using the svgedit plugin in dokuwiki for quick diagramming on the run. It produces standard SVG text files and has an always up to the date javascript wysiwyg editor. And, I submitted a bug/feature request on github and the requested functionality was added post haste.
Edit: FOSS!
i understand this question is old enough. but you could try Origramy. it's a Flash-based visual tool. and XML as the result can be get from the component. alas integration to wiki must be made separately
Not sure of the technology you have on your server, but Open Diagram can create a jpg image file on the server which can then be referenced as a normal image in your wiki. Its open source.
I've enjoyed the simplicity of UMLet for a while as a desktop app. Don't let the name fool you! There is more than just UML - it has a lot of basic charting elements in it. It's not pretty, and it can be awkward sometimes, but it works. Has basic visual items in a template/toolbox that you double-click on to reproduce on your canvas. You can then move it about, resize it, or edit the item and modify it via text.
There isn't an existing online integration method (that I've seen), but being that it's good old fashioned java, you might be able to make it happen.
It's free and distributed under the GNU General Public Licence.
honestly i think you are going to have to use Java and code an applet. there are wondrous advancements in javascript libraries (AJAX, JQuery) that also might assist in this...
cheers my friend.
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We # medicware.com.br are thinking about making our web application offline-capable with Gears. Our main goal is to keep basic functionality running when the internet connection goes down.
So, I'd like to hear success stories, tips and resources about yours real experiences in that field (related to Gears or not).
Remember the Milk has done a nice job of using Gears -- you might see what you can find out about their implementation. I'd start at http://code.google.com/apis/gears/articles/take_app_offline.html.
Do you have to use Gears? I've used their AdWords API extensively, as well as Google Data, and the experiences left me lacking. Sure, things are reasonably well documented, but when it comes to support, there's no one you can call and real Google developer postings in forums are rare. They also are known for announcing cataclysmic changes with little notices, and, this is on paid products like AdWords.
I'd seriously look at Adobe Air. Adobe has worked with 3rd parties for years and they're pouring tons of money into doing Air right.
I've had good experiences with Adobe Air. It's not gears and it was nothing more than a look to see how it worked, but it was so simple that i'd think it would be easy to port any large scale application over.
There is a couple of video resources available:
Dion Almaers 50 minute presentation goes from overview/businesscase down into the actual code: quite helpful for understanding concepts and getting examples for actual implementation code.
Offline web apps with Google Gears
I recently saw "Google I/O 2008 - Taking Large-Scale Applications Offline". Good for grasping the concept but also very complex -- Googles problems are most likely not typical scaling problems. And there was no concrete code. Only some architectural strategies.
Also, if you need code examples, try "offline dojo" as well. Even though it's a screencast of Dojos offline wrapper, I think it's pretty helpful (and only 8 minutes short)
Dojo offline screencast, (overview on dojo offline homepage)
In my eager to answer your question, I just stumbled upon Google I/O 2009 - HTML5 Databases/Gears & Offline Web Apps, which i will see during lunch. Feedback on this yet, anyone?
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I've always wanted to sketch all ideas I come up with in the computer instead of on paper, but everyone knows that sketching with good 'ol fashioned pen and paper beats the crap out of trying to do it with a mouse (or even worse, a touch pad).
So I turn to stack overflow with this question: Does any one of you know a magic program that will help in sketching out diagrams, ideas, etc. with decent speed on a computer?
I'm not after something that will do pretty diagrams (that take ages to do, btw.) like Visio, Dia (kudos the the Dia developers though, kick ass app), etc. but for jotting down quick ideas and drawing early work flow sketches, etc.
(I know - a wacom board, but it's not really feasible to carry it around with your laptop)
I still go for a whiteboard and a decent camera on the mobile phone.
Normally when working on the whiteboard, we often go through a phase of erasing out all the unimportant stuff after we've worked out what the real essence of the problem and the solution. So we put some nice pictures on the wiki ;)
Did you consider some kind of mind-mapping application ?
PersonalBrain is quite handy for that type of task, even though the "diagram" feature is quite limited.
alt text http://www.thebrain.com/site/personalbrain/learningzone/topUses/awareness3.png
I'm actually a big fan of OneNote. It's great for entering text and organizing it in a visual way.
This won't do for situations where you're working with other people, but I often do my brain-storming with GraphViz.
GraphViz gives you the dot and neato languages for drawing graphs. So you start jotting down items and the relationships between them in your favourite text editor:
graph brainstorm {
release -- documentation
release -- "bug fixes"
release -- enhancements
documentation -- "release notes"
documentation -- "user guide"
enhancements -- "user requests" -- "support team"
enhancements -- marketing -- demo
}
You can then turn this into a image:
neato diagram http://share4pic.com/images/2/9/3/2935067.jpg
There are lots of options for formatting and layout and so on if you want to prettify the output.
It doesn't work for idea's or diagrams, but i found this very impressive: I love sketch. Hopefully, we'll see similar tools in the future for other forms of information.
When i was still using windows i used adobe illustrator and a wacom tabled for sketching diagrams (example). Powerfull, but a steep learning curve, if you just want to do sketching.
On linux i use Inkscape (with a wacom tablet). It's not as powerful as illustrator, but it gets the job done. (example).
I would love to use a sketching tool for creating presentations. Have a number of slides on my screen, and just sketch to contents of every sheet, also using the wacom to drag and drop the slides in the right order, etc.
There was a research project called SILK (Sketching Interfaces Like Krazy) a few years ago (mid 90s) at Carnegie-Mellon. Two papers that talked about the work are Interactive Sketching for the Early Stages of User Interface Design and Just Draw It! Programming by Sketching Storyboards.
I thought their ideas were very cool, but the project seems to have blown away. I'm mentioning it here for two reasons:
To support the questioner's idea that this would be A Very Good Thing for early design stages, and
In hopes that someone else will have more luck than I did in finding out what happened to SILK (or at least the prototypes).
I know you are "not after something that will do pretty diagrams".
However, I believe this new web flash-based application LovelyCharts might be oo assistance for quick (and nice too) diagrams, and can be compliant with your goal to "jotting down quick ideas and drawing early work flow sketches, etc."
Example of work flow sketch:
The closest thing to the feeling of writing on paper with pencil or pen that I have found is a graphics tablet (relatively inexpensive and small Wacom Bamboo is enough) with Autodesk's SketchBook Pro software.
Try the trial (if you have graphics tablet handy, not really the same with a mouse), it's amazing how natural digital drawing feels with that app.
Depending on how close you are to implementing something, balsamiq mockups may be what you want. I find it great for mocking up user interfaces, and it's probably not a bad way to start sketching a development idea.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro is the closest I've come to a whiteboard after an extensive search. Minimal controls, yet enough. It's also attractively priced, in line with its simplicty.
Maybe you should consider buying a Graphic Tablet .
I recommend Wacom Bamboo
I wouldn't suggest it, but people have mentioned mind-mapping products and even OneNote (¡sin comentarios!), so I'll plug my TheKBase Desktop and it's Cloud brother, TheKBase Web. NO, they will not help you draw things like on paper, but in many cases, diagrams are not what you need. You want to organize your ideas and whip them into shape.
If you insist on diagramming, 30x less annoying than Visio is SmartDraw (sorry for the Spanish grammar).
Moleskin for the win!
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Closed 11 years ago.
Does any body know what powers Google Charts? I have been using it for a while but not sure what Google used to build it.
They bought the Gapminder library for doing charts. It's a Java library as far as I know, but they don't seem very anxious to release the code as open-source.
Everything at google is done in C++, Java, or Python. I'm guessing the internals is probably done in one of the latter two.
Mathplotlib was my guess too - ( thanks "davidg" ).
SVG - got my own doubts because you don't have to go the length of server side SVG just to produce a static image. No panning or scaling required so not sure if they used SVG
I feel the touch of SVG there..
Maybe Internal engine to generate and work with SVG and export images as PNG images.
Any other thoughts?
Just guessing here: they must be using Python with some charting library and then returning the produced files. There are a few tools to do charts in Python. Matplotlib and ReportLab come to mind.
What is sure is that you can do it with a Java servlet.
Eastwood is an open source implementation of the Google Chart API.
(powered by JFreeChart)
Probably just libraries they have written themselves, it's pretty easy to throw together a chart drawing library, but hard to do it right. So someone hacked together a custom java/C++/python library using already available stuff to be able to update the graphics of his charts easily, and then it extended.
That's the great thing about it, that you can make your own version without much effort, just change the URL and design your own flash animation of the chart. And that the data available in the graphs is easily webscraped..
Just theory, but something like this is perfect small project to do in 20% of your time.