Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Software Operating Systems Windows

Free (as in beer) Windows Flowcharting? 71

Posted by Cliff from the diagrams-of-geometric-shapes dept.
bhtooefr asks: "I need a flowcharting program for use in one of my programming classes at Central Ohio Technical College, and I can't afford to spend much money. The instructor recommended that I use Microsoft Visio, but it's way past my budget (and I can't obtain it for free). I've tried a free trial app (SmartDraw), but I didn't like the UI at all. Kivio won't do the job, because the free version is only for KDE, and Kivio MP isn't free. However, if there's a Kivio port to Windows that is free, I'd be rather interested. Any ideas here?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Free (as in beer) Windows Flowcharting? More

Free (as in beer) Windows Flowcharting?

Comments Filter:

  • Visual Thought (Score:5, Informative)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @12:25AM (#7187875) Homepage
    Get it here. [bombshellstudios.com]

  • Heard of Dia? (Score:3, Informative)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @12:27AM (#7187882) Homepage Journal
    It's not only free, it's Free and it's available for unix platforms as well as Windows.

    Dia, a drawing program [lysator.liu.se]
    • I tried it last week, and it is wholly unsuited to do anything bigger than a page. There are issues with scale, printing, scale+printing. It mainly stems from one being unable to tell ahead of time how big one's flowcharts will print. I'm sorry, but an 8-inch wide box by default seems a bit wrong to me.
      • I've used Dia a LOT under Linux, and I've never had that problem. Assuming the features have been ported correctly you should be able to go to page setup, and tell it to fit the image to any number of pages. If you select 1 by 1 your entire drawing will be on 1 page. If you go 4 by 4 it will be on 16 pages you can stictch together. Take a look at the page setup options. Notice that the settings effect where the blue lines are. Those will be the page boundaries when you print.
      • Yeah, I tried the windows port too. Worked ok, up until the point where I had to print it somehow. Maybe I was using it wrong, but I had to export the graphic to a big .png and print from a graphics program.

        That was a couple months ago, perhaps things have improved. The linux version worked well enough...
  • But the el-cheapo educational version or get it from Kazaa.
    • That's how we'll get Open Source and/or Free Software to become widly used, by promoting copyright violations on proprietary software.

      Personally I do without what I am not willing to pay for in software. Not because I think copying is morally wrong, but becuase I don't want to be complacent in Microsoft's market domination. If we all copy MS products illegally, then we can't complain that the Free eqivalents aren't up to snuff, they wouldn't have any users!

      And this isn't even a political free software p

      • Re:Visio rules (Score:4, Informative)

        by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @12:57AM (#7187999)
        Who gives a shit about free software. The guy has a project to get done.

        There is nothing wrong with paying $60 for a very well designed and useful piece of software. Visio is a stellar product, which is why MS bought the company.

        • This is not to say that equivalent/better software aren't available for even less money ... They should at least be considered.

          Inertia and habit is what is killing progress and evolution a whole ...
          • No, corporate ownership of Congressmen to yield draconian legislature like the DMCA is killing progress. Perhaps unrelated to the subject at hand, but sometimes "old and busted" IS "the new hotness."

            I, for one, consider Visio vastly superior to dia. *shrug*
        • Ummm, according to Microsoft [microsoft.com], Visio standard costs $199 and Professional runs you $499. Get your facts straight, man!

      • I must agree, Visio is the only thing Microsoft has that is worth while.
        However the marketing model they use for is nothing short of offensive.

        The Kompany market Kivio & the templates the way flow charting software should be!

        So I use it when I can.

        • uh, visio wasn't from Microsoft in the first place, guess that what makes the design not totally brain-dead (the later MS additions, of course, are in that brain-dead category)
    • I'm going to have to agree with this. I was recently in the same situation you were, flowcharting for a technical school class. I really wanted to use something open source, but after trying a couple packages (Dia, for one), I found that Visio is just plain better.

      I have faith that someday, Dia will reach it's level, but unfortunately, us poor students don't have the time to wait for it's development, nor the time to help much with it's development.

      100% open source just isn't practical sometimes.
  • Check out the gtk+ based Dia [lysator.liu.se]. You can find the Win32 version here [lysator.liu.se].

    • Re:Try Dia (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AndyElf ( 23331 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:46AM (#7189154) Homepage
      With all due respect to Dia -- it is hardly Visio replacement. Afew PVs:

      * Having to go through 3-5 clicks just to change a width or color of a line -- gimme a break.

      * Can't apply changes to group of objects.

      * Annoying menu structure -- it is even worse than that of The Gimp.

      * On Windows -- it's just too quirky and to slow (which largely GTK+ problem, admitted by the porters, hopefully will get better, eventually...)

      One can use Dia if one has to -- but it really is *not* a drop-in Visio replacement.

      Speaking of which -- with each new release it (Visio) gets worse...
      • I've used gimp extensively and find its interface to work quite well. It has a bit of a learning curve compared to other applications, but considering its function, it seems reasonable (and effecient) to have it setup as it is. Of course I am bias to it now, but I find other programs like photoshop to be rather cumbersome to use. Particularly because you have to go away from the image to perform a task.
  • you might be able to afford Kivio MP. ;>

    • Switching from Windows to Linux may not always be feasible. I acquired a copy of a Mandrake 9.x series distro. I told Mandrake to install in a dual-boot configuration with Windows 2000. It autodetected my Radeon 9000 video card as a "radeon", but when I clicked Test, X no worky. Are you now saying I need to buy all new hardware just to run Linux with usable X11?

  • I use Dia for diagraming and I love it. Of course I don't do anything complex or super important with it, so for all I know its not full featured enough. I do not know if the windows port is any good as I don't run windows, you can check it out here http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    I've never used Kivio as I also don't run KDE, so I can not compare the two, although I am sure I will get at least one response that says Kivio is much better and vice versa :)

  • Flowcharting? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JimMcCusker ( 27543 )
    Of course this could be for historical purposes, but is that still done in schools? Some bad habits die hard, I guess, but I thought that flowcharting was dropped when Dijkstra declared "goto" harmful [acm.org]. Flowcharting has given way to pseudocode and for some UML (not that it shouldn't go the way of flowcharting, but every tool has its purpose). It's a very dangerous way of looking at coding, as it discourages abstraction, assumes a global data space (when scoping is essential to modern programming), and allows
    • Flowcharting is a mainstay of structured imperative
      design. It's used as a means of converting
      unstructured flow into a structured flow, and of
      doing top-down design.

      Frankly, it's one hell of a lot more useful than
      UML. Anyone can pick up a flow chart and understand it.
      It takes an understanding of OO to understand basic
      UML. Then there's the candy sprinkles on top.
    • Nassi-Schneiderman flowcharts don't have gotos - and are great at top-down structured refinement.

      You are correct about the global data space, but for just working out what do next, Nassi-Schneiderman flowcharts are cool, as you have to think about the scope of your loops and if statements.

      Nassi-Schneiderman diagrams [techtutorials.com]
      How to Draw Nassi-Shneiderman Diagrams [thern.org]

      In a quick search, I have not found any free Nassi-Schneiderman flowchart programs. I know that Visio included a stencil... don't know if it is still t

    • A flowchart is an abstraction, and does not necessarily (in fact seldom does) describe software in its entirity.

      A flowchart can cover the logical flow of a single function, a stateful class, an algorithm, a user interaction sequence, or any other level of granularity. The data required is global within that view of that part of the system -- that could translate in implementation to local, member, namespace or global variables.

      Nothing in a flowchart requires the use of "goto" in implementation. The mo

    • A flowchart is an abstraction, and does not necessarily (in fact seldom does) describe software in its entirity.

      A flowchart can cover the logical flow of a single function, a stateful class, an algorithm, a user interaction sequence, or any other level of granularity. The data required is global within that view of that part of the system -- that could translate in implementation to local, member, namespace or global variables.

      Nothing in a flowchart requires the use of "goto" in implementation. The mo

  • Programming Flowcharting = UML (Score:3, Informative)

    by ChaseTec ( 447725 ) <chase@osdev.org> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @12:54AM (#7187983) Homepage
    If you're really wanting to do charting for programming then you probably want to do UML. ArgoUML [argouml.org] is Java based and the recent versions work pretty good.
    • I don't think any CS students want to do flowcharting, it's just something that old boneheaded profs cling to. I've had a few that wanted flowcharts, mostly so they could avoid having to read students' code.
  • What about xfig and it's library of pictures. It has flowcharts and everything.

  • dia (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @01:36AM (#7188132) Homepage Journal
    I can't believe people don't know about this program. It's great for all kinds of diagrams. I mostly use it for UML diagrams and E/R database diagrams. Being a programmer, that's the type of stuff I do.

    Get it here: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/ [lysator.liu.se]

    It works with windows or linux, you just needs the gtk. And if you use gaim for windows, then you've already got it.

    http://gaim.sf.net [sf.net] IYDAK
  • http://www.gradware.com/ProductDetailT.asp?Product ID=4237 sells for $69
    and old editions are available for less than $30

  • Flowcharts haven't been a particularly useful tool for program design
    since people stopped writing primarily in assembler.
    And they're tedious and time-consuming to construct.
    And they're out of date the day after they're created.
    I had no idea that they were still taught.
    • any (compsci/eng) college worth it's accreditation should teach at least one class in assembly...

      if nothing else, it gets you to understand what a compiler has to do with that awful mess of c code you wrote...

      some people find some form of program flow documentation to be quite useful... a flow chart is one way of doing this... if you have a nice diagraming tool, it's not a huge deal to make them, and if you have the right level of abstraction, the flowchart isn't going to change all that much over the cou

    • Amazing how many people quote this crap without any understanding what they are saying.

      First, understand that "flowchart" is a concept, not a particular notation. It is, quite literally, a diagram that describes a logical flow that includes sequences and decision points. Here is a sample definition [techtarget.com]. Search for "flowchart" and you will get hits on organisational structure, process management, Six Sigma, project management, and yes, software development. State and activity diagrams in UML are a particula

  • Both MS Office and OpenOffice.org have some basic flowchart shapes and/or drawing capabilities. Look for Autoshapes in one of the MS Office apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). I'm not sure what flowchart specific stuff is in OpenOffice.org Draw though as I don't have it installed here.

  • Star Office (Score:3, Informative)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) * on Saturday October 11, 2003 @03:46AM (#7188589)
    Star Office [sun.com] Drawing is as good as Visio for simple tasks. It's free for educational use.
    • I like StarOffice, but it just doesn't cut it for what I need to do. I actually already tried that. However, someone posted a link to Visio 2003. I might just ignore the IRM and not have to dodge bad files on Kazaa.

  • Free as in beer (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by floydigus ( 415917 )
    I can confirm that the hitherto unconfirmed phenomenon of true, free beer does exist. I actually experienced it first hand yesterday in London.

  • dia (Score:2)

    by kipple ( 244681 )
    try dia, it's what works best for those kind of stuff, if I understood your problem correctly.
  • compiling KDE for X under Cygwin, then you can run (insert almost any KDE app here) in windowsm with a little work.

  • Dia (Score:2)

    by stienman ( 51024 )
    Dia [lysator.liu.se] has a windows [sourceforge.net] version. Like many (if not most) free software it's a little rough [ometer.com] around the UI edges, but it works and it's free.

    -Adam

  • ArgoUML (Score:2, Informative)

    by venkats ( 247460 )
    have you had a chance to look at
    ArgoUML (http://argouml.tigris.org/)?
  • 'nuff said.
  • Simply download the 2003 beta (technical refresh) version from Microsoft's website.It's a fully functional version that expires January 31st 2004.
    • http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/e/0/6e0 c5f5b-bb37-42bb-a189-bb66038fce2e/setup.exe
    You're welcome.
  • Just do what I do -- run Knoppix, a Linux distribution that runs from a CD. Then you can run Kivio, Dia, or whatever. Knoppix lets you save files and settings to your hard drive with the "persistent home" option, which shows up on yor Windows system as a regular folder. Other than that, it doesn't mess with your system at all -- it boots and runs completely from the CD. I use Knoppix a lot, for those Linux programs that have no Windows equivalent.
  • At least for me... Dia [lysator.liu.se]. What is especially nice was that I was using it to diagram a database I had designed, and I found a Perl script that would suck the schema out of a PostgreSQL database and make a Dia file out of it. I had to clean it up, but all the tables had been created and the links made.

  • TCM (Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling) [utwente.nl]

    I found it on freshmeat.net [freshmeat.net] a few months back. I've done ER diagrams, UML, and even some network diagrams using the Generic Diagram editor.

  • Gantt charts? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Max Webster ( 210213 )
    On a related note, are there free and easy-to-use Gantt charting programs available?

    Back in '89 it was really easy to produce and print Gantt charts using XML-like markup on an IBM mainframe. I had editor macros that would do things like change the expected end dates for a group of items, or change both the start and end dates.

    Since IBM unplugged that mainframe, I haven't seen anything like that functionality. Everything is graphically based and so not automatable, or kludged up in Excel, or elderly share

Slashdot Top Deals

fortune: cpu time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.

Close