Graphvizer

Graphvizer is a Graphviz plugin for Sublime Text 3. It can make your experience more pleasant when editing a dot language file. You just need to edit your file at the speed of thought and this plugin will render the image and refresh it in real time. If the syntax is invalid, the plugin will show you some error messages.

Features

• Real-time rendering
• Real-time syntax checking
• Error message prompting

Usage

Note: Please ensure the file syntax is set to Graphviz (DOT). You can do this by View -> Syntax or clicking the bottom right corner of Sublime Text window.

Open image window

ctrl+shift+g or Tools -> Graphvizer -> Open Rendered Image

Open Graphvizer panel

ctrl+shift+x or Tools -> Graphvizer -> Show Graphvizer Panel

About Key Bindings

If you want to change the default key bindings, use Preference -> Package Settings -> Graphvizer -> Key Bindings - User to do that.

Why do I create this plugin?

Graphviz is an awesome visualization tool, but it's very inconvenient to write a dot file by hand. I have to use dot file.dot -Tpng -o file.png to render image manually again and again and I don't know whether the syntax is correct or not instantly. Atom editor has an excellent plugin called GraphViz preview+, but I can't find any plugins like this on packagecontrol.io. Finally, I create Graphvizer.

Installation

1. Prerequisites

I can't implement the Graphviz visualization algorithm from scratch, so this plugin needs dot command to render the image. In other words, you need to install the official Graphviz on your system.

For Linux/Mac

Use your operating system package manager (e.g. dnf or apt-get) to install Graphviz.

On my Fedora 27 X86_64, the command is:

sudo dnf install graphviz

Use dot -V to make sure you have configured all things correctly and you should see the version info of Graphviz.

For Windows

Download from here: https://graphviz.gitlab.io/download/. The installation is very simple but you need additional configuration. Otherwise, the plugin don't know where to invoke the dot command.

Method 1: Add the path of dot.exe (e.g. D:\Graphviz\bin) to the PATH environment variable of your system. Then the dot command can be accessed from the command prompt(a.k.a. cmd) and this plugin can also invoke it. If you don't know what the PATH is, Google may help you. I won't explain the full details. Sorry about that.

Type dot -V in Windows cmd window and hit enter. If everything is OK, you will see the version info of Graphviz.

Method 2: Specify the path of dot explicitly with settings file. Open Preference -> Package Settings -> Graphvizer -> Settings - User. Copy the following content to the opened file and set dot_cmd_path according to your system.

{
	// "dot_cmd_path" is the path of dot command. Here are some examples.
	// For Windows: "D:\\Graphviz\\bin\\dot.exe"
	// For Linux: "/usr/bin/dot"
	// For OSX: "/usr/bin/dot"
	// If you have added this path to the PATH environment variable, you can
	// use "dot" instead of the full absolute path.
	"dot_cmd_path": "dot"
}

2. Installing Graphvizer

Using Package Control

The easiest way to install Graphvizer is through Package Control. You must have known how to do this.

Bring up the Command Palette (Control+Shift+P on Linux/Windows, Command+Shift+P on Mac). Select Package Control: Install Package and then search Graphvizer to install it.

Manually

git clone this project to your system or just download the zip file from GitHub and decompress it. Now you have got the Graphvizer directory.

Using the Sublime Text 3 menu Preferences -> Browse Packages... to find out your package directory path. On my Windows 7, the path is D:\Sublime Text 3\Data\Packages. Move the entire Graphvizer directory into the package directory. Done!

Other Configurations

Set timeout for dot command

If you are editing a very large graph, the dot command may need a long time to complete and your CPU may be exhausted. For this reason, I set a timeout for dot command and it will be terminated if it takes too long to complete. You can change the timeout if you want. Open Preference -> Package Settings -> Graphvizer -> Settings - User. Copy the following content to the opened file and set dot_timeout as needed.

{
	// If the dot command takes more than `dot_timeout` seconds, it will be
	// terminated. The default value is 6 seconds.
	"dot_timeout": 6
}

Show the image in a separated layout

By default, the plugin will show the image in a new window. This is flexible in most cases, especially when you have two monitors. If you do like use a separated layout to show the image, you can change the default configuration. Open Preference -> Package Settings -> Graphvizer -> Settings - User. Copy the following content to the opened file and set "show_image_with" to "layout" and then save it. (You may need to restart Sublime Text 3 to take effects.)

{
	// "show_image_with" controls how to show the image.
	// The default value is "window", so the image will be shown in a new
	// window by default. If you want to show it in a new layout instead,
	// change the following value to "layout".
	"show_image_with": "window"
}

To-Do List

• Configure the dot command path in Settings.
• Key Bindings for Window/Linux/OSX separately.
• Add Preference -> Package Settings menu items to custom user settings.
• Being able to show the image in a separated layout.
• Set timeout for dot command.

• For other features, please open an issue.

LICENSE

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2 (GPLv2)