Text -> Diagram Tool

Question

I'm looking for an diagram tool for producing diagrams from text. I only really need sequence and state type diagrams for now, but I'm curious as to what people would recommend? I need something which is standalone, not a web based tool that works on Linux, OSX and Windows.

Answer 1

You could try JavE, but that's more a general drawing program than specific to UML or other diagrams. I don't know whether there would be any tool specifically written to draw UML diagrams in ASCII—it strikes me as a somewhat ... rare use case.

Answer 2

I'm not positive what you mean by "producing diagrams from text", but if you mean a tool where diagrams are specified by a text file, Graphviz is good. If you mean something that literally converts ascii art like

+--------+   +-------+    +-------+
|        | --+ ditaa +--> |       |
|  Text  |   +-------+    |diagram|
|Document|   |!magic!|    |       |
|     {d}|   |       |    |       |
+---+----+   +-------+    +-------+
    :                         ^
    |       Lots of work      |
    +-------------------------+

to a graphic, you can try ditaa (that ascii art is from their website, so it's a good example of the input format it expects)

Answer 3

Look at PlantUML, LaTeX+MetaUML, sdedit, TextUML, yUML, ... There is a plenty of quite good tools.

Answer 4

An exhaustive list of such tools can be founde here: http://modeling-languages.com/content/uml-tools#textual

Answer 5

You can contact Reverse Java Team. They can provide you tool which does exactly what your requirement is.