Tangentially, I must highlight the underrecognized gvpr [1], the Graphviz Pattern Scanning and Processing Language and part of any Graphviz installation. In short, it is an AWK-like program to process your .dot files.
Combined with the fact that the DOT syntax allows for gradual precision, in that you can add directives to an existing DOT document to add details (shape, positioning...), and you can do pre-processing of a graph before passing it to the final layout and rendering engine.
I used this at some point to generate a Factorio processing graph, organizing each layer by its minimum production depth (ie ores at layer 1, plates at layer 2, etc...)
I occasionally use graphviz and pretty much always wind up frustrated with it. The syntax is pedantic and the resulting output is pretty ugly for all but the simplest graphs.
What's your use case for it? For manual diagrams, making an explanatory diagram for a presentation or something I would never recommend it. Declaratively typing out all your information is going to take just as long as setting it directly in drawio, but with less control over the result.
Where graphviz/dot has always shined for me is you have some application built around a data flow graph and occasionally need to debug a run with 50+ nodes at a time. So you write a file dumper for your structure. A visual makes understanding the structure so much faster, and nothing else seems to produce layouts nearly as good as dot.
I tried most of these declarative diagrams, while they work to some degree, the best outcome I had was with drawio but you should have the skill installed.
Depends on your use case. If i want to export some graph data structure from a program to visualise it for debugging purposes, graphviz is way more relevant than doing it by hand in drawio.
But if I'm making a presentation for a conference I would choose differently. And in between you get a whole spectrum of tradeoffs.
Tangentially, I must highlight the underrecognized gvpr [1], the Graphviz Pattern Scanning and Processing Language and part of any Graphviz installation. In short, it is an AWK-like program to process your .dot files.
Combined with the fact that the DOT syntax allows for gradual precision, in that you can add directives to an existing DOT document to add details (shape, positioning...), and you can do pre-processing of a graph before passing it to the final layout and rendering engine.
I used this at some point to generate a Factorio processing graph, organizing each layer by its minimum production depth (ie ores at layer 1, plates at layer 2, etc...)
[1] https://graphviz.org/docs/cli/gvpr/
I occasionally use graphviz and pretty much always wind up frustrated with it. The syntax is pedantic and the resulting output is pretty ugly for all but the simplest graphs.
What's your use case for it? For manual diagrams, making an explanatory diagram for a presentation or something I would never recommend it. Declaratively typing out all your information is going to take just as long as setting it directly in drawio, but with less control over the result.
Where graphviz/dot has always shined for me is you have some application built around a data flow graph and occasionally need to debug a run with 50+ nodes at a time. So you write a file dumper for your structure. A visual makes understanding the structure so much faster, and nothing else seems to produce layouts nearly as good as dot.
If you don't even explain neato vs fdp, what's the point?
It's a sales website with a not-terrible hook.
Also AI generated diagrams with strange labelling doesn't persuade me much.
I tried most of these declarative diagrams, while they work to some degree, the best outcome I had was with drawio but you should have the skill installed.
Depends on your use case. If i want to export some graph data structure from a program to visualise it for debugging purposes, graphviz is way more relevant than doing it by hand in drawio.
But if I'm making a presentation for a conference I would choose differently. And in between you get a whole spectrum of tradeoffs.