SVGbob

Svgbob converts ASCII art into clean SVG line drawings, with rounded corners and proper arrowheads. It keeps the plain text source, which stays readable in a terminal.

Compared with Ditaa it favours lines over filled boxes, and the output looks lighter.

#What it is good at

README and code-comment diagrams brought onto a page.
Directory trees and terminal output that deserve to look intentional.
Documentation kept in source control alongside code.

#What it draws

Element	Syntax
Box	dashes and pipes, or .- and '- for rounded corners
Arrow	-> <- ^ v
Junction	+ where lines meet
Diagonal	/ and \
Text	anything not recognised as a line

#A worked example

Rounded boxes and arrows, drawn in text:

The source, which you can paste into a new diagram and edit:

        .-------------.
       |   Producer    |
        '------+------'
               |
               v
     .---------------------.
    |     Message queue     |
     '----+-------------+--'
          |             |
          v             v
   .-----------.  .-----------.
  | Consumer A | | Consumer B |
   '-----------'  '-----------'

#A few things that catch people out

Rounded corners come from .- and '- rather than +.
Keep the source in a monospace context; proportional fonts break the alignment.
It draws lines, not fills. If you want coloured boxes, use Ditaa.

BlockDiag

Boxes and arrows where a chain is a whole diagram.

ActDiag

Activity diagrams where each lane owns its steps.

Examples

Working diagrams you can copy.

Thirty-one languages. Nobody knows them all.