[Discuss] Flow Charting

[John Blomfield]

Patrick wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 16:20:55 -0800
> "Lloyd Budd" wrote:
>
>   
>> On Dec 4, 2007 4:03 PM, John Blomfield <jabfield at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>     
>>> I recently found the need to develop a flow chart for some code I am
>>> working on that needed something a little clearer and editable than my
>>> usual rough sketch.  After a little search I came up with Kivio which I
>>> can now recommend as an excellent tool for anyone else writing any
>>> tricky code.  But just out of curiosity are there any other contenders
>>> out there?
>>>       
>> I've used Dia, but have not done much with it.
>> http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/
>>     
>
> Thanks.  I tend to think non-sequentially, so jotting down a few
> notes in a text file is easy enough for small stuff, but flow
> charts and diagrams are much better for outlining anything with
> any level of complexity.
>
> Kivio is probably too resource-hungry for my old laptop [at
> least with the initials `KDE' in its description].  Maybe better
> though, if your machine's fast enough, so I won't knock it.  Dia
> looks interesting too, and probably leaner.
>
>
>   
I've now tried Dia and my initial evaluation is that Dia is designed to 
be a much more comprehensive drawing program not just a simple flow 
chart program like kivio. You can draw electrical circuits, all sorts of 
engineering simbols, etc. Dia's drag and drop, repositioning is a little 
easier than kivio (less edgy ) but as far as flow diagrams are concerned 
is functionally the same.  The big advantage of kivio for me is that the 
printing function is superior in that it provides a flexible printing 
interface that is easy to understand.  kivio printing is "what you see 
is what you get" and you can preview a page, see where you stuff is on 
the page and set up the printer or page layout.  With Dia I haven't 
figured out yet if the scale is in cm or inches or where the diagrams 
are on the "printing page"!  I doubt if kivio is any more resource 
hungry than Dia since Dia has all the additional drawing symbols stored 
somewhere but I haven't done any tests to find out.

John Blomfield

>> Hope that helps,
>> Lloyd
>>     
>
> Oh, it probably will.  :-)
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Patrick.
>
>