xdot.py is an interactive viewer for graphs written in Graphviz's dot language.
It uses internally the graphviz's xdot output format as an intermediate format, and PyGTK and Cairo for rendering.
xdot.py can be used either as a standalone application from command line, or as a library embedded in your python application.
xdot.py script became much more popular than I ever anticipated, and there are several interested in improving it further. However, for several years now, xdot.py already meets my own needs, and unfortunately I don't have much time for maintain it myself.
So I'm looking into transition xdot.py maitenance to others: either hand over the maintenance xdot.py to a community or indicate an official fork of xdot.py.
I encourage people interested in development of xdot.py to fork the GitHub repository, and join the new mailing list.
- Since it doesn't use bitmaps it is fast and has a small memory footprint.
- Arbitrary zoom.
- Keyboard/mouse navigation.
- Supports events on the nodes with URLs.
- Animated jumping between nodes.
- Highlights node/edge under mouse.
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2013-05-12: Text based node search (by Salva and ludw1g.m3i3r, issue 68)
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2012-11-24: Printing support (by ludw1g.m3i3r, issue 74)
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2011-09-01: Fix forward slash escaping (issue 61)
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2011-02-13: Show dotted lines in xdot (by djs52uk, issue 50)
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2010-12-12: Support images (thanks to Alberto Rodríguez)
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2010-01-32: Add Quit key binding (from sk, issue #30)
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2009-09-30: Add a reload button (fixes issue #22)
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2009-09-30: Properly handle motion-notify-event (from lodatom, issue #24)
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2009-09-20: Automatically reloads open file when it changes (from Robert Meerman, issue #21)
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2009-09-20: Add support for ColorBrewer Color Schemes (from to michael.hliao, issue #23).
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2009-08-09: Upload to PyPi (thanks to Marius Gedminas, issue #19)
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2009-05-24: Reloads the file on the 'r' key (from peterbjorgensen).
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2009-04-09: Render subgraphs correctly.
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2009-03-04: Support filled bezier shapes.
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2009-01-29: Check for unicode input; check subprocess returncode (from Jaap Karssenberg).
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2008-10-27: Replace pydot and pyparsing by a much faster hand written lexer and parser (issue #9).
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2008-09-02: Make mouse wheel zoom around the mouse cursor rather than center of window (from Marius Gedminas).
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2008-09-02: Handle polylines. Handle ports in node names.
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2008-07-27: Allow to specify the graphviz filter to use.
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2008-07-13: Commit several enhancements done by Marius Gedminas, such as, animated jumping between nodes, highlighted node/edge under mouse, and support to more xdot language features.
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Not all xdot attributes are supported or correctly rendered yet. It works well for my applications but YMMV.
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Text doesn't scale properly to large sizes if font hinting is enabled. I haven't find a reliable way to disable font hinting during rendering yet.
See also:
Download and install:
Run:
apt-get install python-gtk2 graphviz
Usage:
xdot.py [file]
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-f FILTER, --filter=FILTER
graphviz filter: dot, neato, twopi, circo, or fdp
[default: dot]
-n, --no-filter assume input is already filtered into xdot format (use
e.g. dot -Txdot)
Shortcuts:
Up, Down, Left, Right scroll
PageUp, +, = zoom in
PageDown, - zoom out
R reload dot file
F find
Q quit
P print
Escape halt animation
Ctrl-drag zoom in/out
Shift-drag zooms an area
If no input file is given then it will read the dot graph from the standard input.
See included example.py script for an example of how to embedded xdot.py into another application.
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ZGRViewer -- another superb graphviz/dot viewer
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dot2tex -- python script to convert xdot output from Graphviz to a series of PSTricks or PGF/TikZ commands.
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The pypy project also includes an interactive dot viewer based on graphviz's plain format and the pygame library.