outline_to_dot

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Indented outline => dot

Convert a simple indented (markdown inspired) outline format to dot language.

Example input file:

# This is a comment; blank lines get eaten.

main
    # Default indent marker is 4 spaces. This can be changed.
    topic one
        subtopic one
    topic two
        subtopic one
        subtopic two

From the command line, running

./outline_to_dot.py input-file.txt

produces the output:

digraph G {
    "main" -> "topic one";
    "topic one" -> "subtopic one";
    "main" -> "topic two";
    "topic two" -> "subtopic one";
    "topic two" -> "subtopic two";
}

The default output is to standard out, but one can specify an output file with

./outline_to_dot.py -o output-file.dot input-filt.txt

So then

dot -Tpng -o output-graph.png output-file.dot

produces the following graph:

Another useful option is to maintain a strict tree structure in the output. This is specified as follows:

./outline_to_dot.py --tree=True input-file.txt

Using the same input as above, this produces a slightly different graph: