Question

I’d like some tips on software (Windows or Linux) to draw graphs for teaching algorithms. Ideally, it should have support for several frames of similar drawings with little variation between them and, most importantly, changes could be propagated to all frames.

I currently use yEd to draw graphs, but copy/paste between different images has several issues, for instance, if I change the color of a node after having created several copies, I have to change it in each image separately.

I once used (for a very brief time) Macromedia Flash and I believe it would be quite nice to try with it, but it costs simply too much and is overkill.

DOT is quite nice but I couldn’t find a graphical interface with quick feedback to ease the task. It wouldn’t bother me if the tool required some programming, but the text-to-image conversion should be almost real-time.

Last time I tried Dia and Visio both didn’t seem to have what I want, but maybe I missed it…

Thanks!

Answer 1

OmniGraffle for Mac/iPad has the notion of “shared layers” which might be what you are looking for. From the official website:

Share the love between your canvases with shared layers. 
When you have common elements that you'd like to display 
on different canvases, shared layers make it easy to keep 
them updated. Change any object on a shared layer (a logo, 
a background, a wireframe) and the change instantly shows 
up on every canvas that shares the layer.

However it’s not multi-platform.