Quick Graphviz Tutorial
Wed 02 January 2019 by Dr. Dirk Colbry
This quick tutorial shows provides basic instructions for generating the above graph using Graphviz.
If you already have Anaconda installed on your system, you can quickly install graphviz using the following command:
conda install graphviz
Once graphviz is installed you need to create a text file with the connections. This file is called a dot file. There are a lot of tutorials about the dot syntax but the basics is to make a list of nodes and their connections. For example, the following file (called test.dot) makes the figure above. Use the -> to indicate a directed link and a -- to indicate a bi-directional link:
digraph G {
Linux -> Normal [ label="vim" ];
Normal -> Insert [ label="i/I/a/A/o/O" ];
Insert -> Normal [ label="Esc"];
Normal -> Command [ label=": (colon)"];
Command -> Normal [ label="w"];
Command -> Linux [ label="q/q!/wq/x"]
}
Once you have the file you can make an image using the following dot command (dot is one of the commands installed by Graphviz)
dot -Tpng test.dot -ovim.png
Just for fun, I tried my dot file with the other tools provided with Graphviz (twopim, sfdp, neato, osage, fdp, circo and patchwork). They don't look as good as dot (most of them mess up the line labels) however i could see that they may be useful (and easy) for other figures:
Hope you find this useful.
Three and Four way switch status lights
There are two light switches in our mudroom that control the garage lights and the lights on the front of the house. Unfortunately I can not see these lights when standing next to the switches and sense there are multiple switches for each light you can not know if the …
read moreUsing an X11 Virtual Frame Buffer to run GUI jobs in batch mode on the HPC.
How do we know what we don't know we don't know?
Faculty at MSU conducted a workshop to brainstorm and discuss ways we can try and foresee how education will be changed by technology in an effort to get ahead of the changes and make sure our teaching goals and values stay intact.
My presentation was about the difficulty in predicting …
read moreAlexa Dot Holder
My brother got me an Alexa Dot for Christmas a few years ago. It turns out to be a lot of fun. We put it in the kitchen and the kids play music. My wife and I also use it to add things to our shopping list (very convenient!) Anyway …
read more3D printed Switch Guard
We recently moved into a new house and the kids are having fun running around turning on and off all the lights. Unfortunately, some of the light switches are not for lights. One goes to our garbage disposal, another goes to the gas fireplace and another turns off the furnace …
read moreEmerging Technologies (FPGAs) @ 2018 ACI-REF VR
Today is the last day of the 2018 ACI-REF Virtual residency workshop here in Norman Ok. It was a great week with a lot of great people. I highly recommend the workshop for anyone in the area of Advanced Computing Instruction especially those do some Research and Education Facilitation in …
read moreDeciding Which Technologies to Adopt, and When @ 2018 ACI-REF VR
I had fun leading a discussion on Deciding Which Technologies to Adopt, and When at the 2018 ACI-REF Virtual residency event in Norman Oklahoma. Since many of the participants were virtual I experimented with doing a Brainstorming exercise over zoom. We had local volunteers on typing in comments from our …
read moreTeams of CI Professionals: Recruitment & Retention, Management, Team-building, and Motivation Panel @ 2018 ACI-REF VR
Thank you Aaron Bergstrom (U North Dakota) for facilitating the panel discussion on Teams of CI Professionals: Recruitment & Retention, Management, Team-building, and Motivation at the 2018 ACI-REF Virtual residency. My fellow panel members included:
- Jerry Perez, U Texas Dallas
- Derek Leydig, Pennsylvania State U
- Claire Mizumoto, U California San Diego …
Leading and Listening in Complex CI Conversations @ 2018 ACI-REF VR
I just got done trying out our latest CyberAmbassador Curriculum developed specifically for the 2018 ACI-REF Virtual residency.
We had some growing pains related to getting zoom breakout rooms working with a large group of people calling in. Some didn't have working mics, others work in a group room and …
read more