App::Asciio(3) Plain ASCII diagram

SYNOPSIS


$> perl asciio.pl

DESCRIPTION

This gtk2-perl application allows you to draw ASCII diagrams in a modern (but simple) graphical application. The ASCII graphs can be saved as ASCII or in a format that allows you to modify them later.

Thanks to all the Perl-QA hackathon 2008 in Oslo for pushing me to do an early release.

Special thanks go to the Muppet and the gtk-perl group, Gabor Szabo for his help and advices.

Adam Kennedy coined the cool name.

Sometimes a diagram is worth a lot of text in a source code file. It has always been painfull to do ASCII diagrams by hand.

DOCUMENTATION

Asciio user interface

            .-----------------------------------------------------------------.
            |                             Asciio                              |
            |-----------------------------------------------------------------|
            | ............................................................... |
            | ..............-------------..------------..--------------...... |
            | .............| stencils  > || asciio   > || box          |..... |
            | .............| Rulers    > || computer > || text         |..... |
            | .............| File      > || people   > || wirl_arrow   |..... |
     grid---------->.......'-------------'| divers   > || axis         |..... |
            | ............................'------------'| boxes      > |..... |
            | ......................^...................| rulers     > |..... |
            | ......................|...................'--------------'..... |
            | ......................|........................................ |
            | ......................|........................................ |
            | ......................|........................................ |
            | ......................|........................................ |
            '-----------------------|-----------------------------------------'
                                    |
                                    |
                              context menu

context menu

The context menu allows to access to asciio commands. ASCII is used to insert ASCII elements.

keyboard shortcuts

All the keyboad commands definitions can be found under asciio/setup/actions/. Among the commands implemented are:
  • select all
  • delete
  • undo
  • group/ungroup
  • open / save
  • local clipboard operations

A window displaying the currently available commands is displayed if you press K.

elements

There but a few elements implemented at the moment.

wirl arrow

An arrow that tries to do what you want. Try rotating the end clockwise then counter clockwise to see how it acts

               ^
               |
               |    --------.
               |            |
               '-------     |
                            |
 O-------------X     /      |
                    /       |
                   /        |
                  /         v
                 /
                /
               v

box and text

Both are implemented within the same code. Try double clicking on a box to see what you can do with it.

                 .----------.
                 |  title   |
  .----------.   |----------|   ************
  |          |   | body 1   |   *          *
  '----------'   | body 2   |   ************
                 '----------'
                                             anything in a box
                                 (\_/)               |
         edit_me                 (O.o)  <------------'
                                 (> <)

your own stencils

Take a look at setup/stencils/computer for a stencil example. Stencils lites in setup/setup.ini will be loaded when Asciio starts.

your own element type

For simple elemnts, put your design in a box. that should cover 90% of anyone's needs. You can look in lib/stripes for element implementation examples.

exporting to ASCII

You can export to a file in ASCII format but using the .txt extension.

Exporting to the clipboard is done with ctl + e.

EXAMPLES

           User code ^            ^ OS code
                      \          /
                       \        /
                        \      /
           User code <----Mode----->OS code
                        /      \
                       /        \
                      /          \
          User code  v            v OS code
          
        
             .---.  .---. .---.  .---.    .---.  .---.
    OS API   '---'  '---' '---'  '---'    '---'  '---'
               |      |     |      |        |      |
               v      v     |      v        |      v
             .------------. | .-----------. |  .-----.
             | Filesystem | | | Scheduler | |  | MMU |
             '------------' | '-----------' |  '-----'
                    |       |      |        |
                    v       |      |        v
                 .----.     |      |    .---------.
                 | IO |<----'      |    | Network |
                 '----'            |    '---------'
                    |              |         |
                    v              v         v
             .---------------------------------------.
             |                  HAL                  |
             '---------------------------------------'
             
                 
                 .---------.  .---------.
                 | State 1 |  | State 2 |
                 '---------'  '---------'
                    ^   \         ^  \
                   /     \       /    \
                  /       \     /      \
                 /         \   /        \
                /           \ /          \
               /             v            v
            ******        ******        ******
            * T1 *        * T2 *        * T3 *
            ******        ******        ******
               ^             ^             /
                \             \           /
                 \             \         /
                  \             \       / stimuli
                   \             \     /
                    \             \   v
                     \         .---------.
                      '--------| State 3 |
                               '---------'

DEPENDENCIES

gnome libraries, gtk, gtk-perl, perl

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

Undoubtedly many as I wrote this as a fun little project where I used no design nor 'methodic' whatsoever.

AUTHOR

        Khemir Nadim ibn Hamouda
        CPAN ID: NKH
        mailto:[email protected]

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SUPPORTED OSes

Gentoo

I run gentoo, packages to install gtk-perl exist. Install Ascii with cpan.

FreeBSD

FreeBSD users can now install asciio either by package:

$ pkg_add -r asciio

or from source (out of the ports system) by:

$ cd /usr/ports/graphics/asciio $ make install clean

Thanks to Emanuel Haupt.

Ubuntu and Debian

Ports are on the way.

Windows

AsciiO is part of camelbox and can be found here: <http://code.google.com/p/camelbox/>. Install, run AsciiO from the 'bin' directory.

      .-------------------------------.
     /                               /|
    /     camelbox for win32        / |
   /                               /  |
  /                               /   |
 .-------------------------------.    |
 |  ______\\_,                   |    |
 | (_. _ o_ _/                   |    |
 |  '-' \_. /                    |    |
 |      /  /                     |    |
 |     /  /    .--.  .--.        |    |
 |    (  (    / '' \/ '' \   "   |    |
 |     \  \_.'            \   )  |    |
 |     ||               _  './   |    |
 |      |\   \     ___.'\  /     |    |
 |        '-./   .'    \ |/      |    |
 |           \| /       )|\      |    |
 |            |/       // \\     |    .
 |            |\    __//   \\__  |   /
 |           //\\  /__/  mrf\__| |  /
 |       .--_/  \_--.            | /
 |      /__/      \__\           |/      
 '-------------------------------'

camelbox is a great distribution for windows. I hope it will merge with X-berry series of Perl distributions.

Mac OsX

This works too (and I have screenshots to prove it :). I don't own a mac and the mac user hasn't send me how to do it yet.

other unices

YMMV, install gtk-perl and AsciiO from cpan.

POD ERRORS

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:
Around line 75:
Non-ASCII character seen before =encoding in 'Gabor'. Assuming ISO8859-1