Flow charts in Editor, What program do you use?

[bfriesen]

I asked this question in 2017. Asking again in 2024.What are you using for flow charts or what is your work around to get something that looks like a flow chart that is easily translated?

Bryon

[bfriesen]

Found this for Oxygen https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/task-steps-diagram.html

https://dita-users.groups.io/g/main/topic/blog_post_generating/93416814

Bryon

[ClayHelberg · Accepted solution]

I like DrawIO: https://app.diagrams.net/

It saves in an XML format that should make translation pretty easy, and exports to bitmap and vector (SVG) formats. It even supports math expressions.

[reynold_dechant]

Will use it troubleshooting flow diagrams

[ClayHelberg]

I'm not sure what you mean by "will it use". You can create troubleshooting flow diagrams, but maybe you mean something more specific, like "import troubleshooting information in X format and generate a diagram from it" or something along those lines?

I found a quick tutorial online for creating a troubleshooting flowchart with DrawIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFyl-AnEvM0

[reynold_dechant]

Sorry - was stating that I will use it - not really a question. 
Placed a .svg into my Arbortext topic and published - looks great. We don't have import > XML in Arbortext turned on.

[ClayHelberg]

My apologies, I read your post wrong, I read it as a question "will it use" instead of "will use it". I'm glad it's working for you!

[bfriesen]

Thanks Clay this looks like a good option. What need to be done to add the file into a topic? Is the only way to make it an image? and bring it in as a reference? If it becomes an image then translation becomes harder. Under the import option I only see text file on our install no XML. Is there a place to enable it?

Bryon

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Bryon--

I think there are a few ways to try to tackle this:

1. You could update your DTD/schema to allow the native DrawIO XML markup in your documents, and then add rules to your stylesheet to format them. That would be a good bit of work, but might pay dividends in the future with a streamlined workflow for maintaining and localizing diagrams.
2. You could save as SVG and reference as usual for a graphic. This is easy on the Arbortext side. Localization could be done on either the generated SVG directly (which is just XML under the hood with easily accessible strings), or in the source *.drawio file.
3. If you are using DITA, there is an <svg-container> element, which seems to allow you to embed SVG markup inline directly in a topic. I poked at it for a few minutes and didn't have much luck with it, but if you play around with it you might find a configuration that works to let you include the SVG markup directly in the topic. In that case it should make localization relatively seamless with your normal localization process. Of course, to modify the diagram, you would need to export it back to standalone SVG, import it into DrawIO (which seems to work OK in my very brief testing), update it, and then regenerate the inline SVG content.

[ClayHelberg]

Also, for future reference, if you want to insert XML content from a file into your document, use Insert->File... from the menus.