Embedding GraphViz in LaTeX documents

I have to say I'm loving using LaTeX for my Uni papers. It is so delightfully straightforward and powerful.

I am embedding some GraphViz diagrams in my documents, but I didn't want a round trip to a different editor buffer and the shell to edit/compile/insert the diagram.

Based on graphviz.tex code by Derek Rayside I have created a custom LaTeX function that will automatically compile and embed inline GraphViz code (man those wacky capitilisations are getting boring!)

You embed a graph like so:

   \digraph[scale=0.5]{MyGraph}{rankdir=LR; a->b; b->c}

Be careful not to have any double newlines or your dot file will have some bogus \par comments in it (which I should replace with newlines in the function...). Another possible enhancement would be to add a dynamic dot command to set the maximum diagram height & width to the current page/column dimensions.

You need my graphviz.sty and you need the following in your document preamble:

   \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
   \usepackage{graphviz}

Remember to run texhash if you install the style in a system-wide location. Note this assumes pdflatex. Modifying the command for regular latex is an exercise left for the reader.

08:09 AM, 25 Mar 2007 by Mark Aufflick Permalink

Todo

Change this style to use the excellent dot2tex: http://www.fauskes.net/nb/introducing-dot2tex/

by Mark Aufflick on 05/21/07

cool

Awesome! This was very useful for me.

by Unregistered Visitor on 02/13/09

Thank you

I really like this, and I fiddled around with dot2tex as suggested in your comment to yourself. Here are my results. I've never written a latex sty file before, so please feel free to improve it.

% graphviz.sty
% by Mark Aufflick
% 2006-03-25
% mark@aufflick.com
% http://mark.aufflick.com/
%
% based on graphviz.tex by Derek Rayside 2003

% add the following lines to your preamble:

% \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
% \usepackage{graphviz}

% parameters to \digraph:
% 1 - parameters for \includegraphics (optional; default value is "scale=1")
% 2 - name of the digraph
% 3 - body of the digraph

% assumes pdflatex. to modify this command for regular latex,
% replace all .pdf with .ps, and the command becomes simply:
% dot -Tps #1.dot

\ProvidesPackage{dottotex}

\newcommand{\dottotex}[2]{ 
  \newwrite\dotfile 
  \immediate\openout\dotfile=#1.dot 
  \immediate\write\dotfile{digraph #1 {\string#2}} 
  \immediate\closeout\dotfile
  \write18{bash -c "`which neato` -Txdot #1.dot | `which dot2tex` -tmath --figonly --usepdflatex -ftikz --tikzedgelabels --styleonly -o #1tikz.tex"}  
  \IfFileExists{#1tikz.tex}
  % the tex exists: include it 
  { \include{#1tikz} } 
  % the tex was not created - show a hint
  { \fbox{ \begin{tabular}{l} 
        The file \texttt{#1tikz.tex} hasn't been created from 
        \texttt{#1.dot} yet. \\
        We attempted to create it with:\\
        `\texttt{neato -Txdot #1.dot | dot2tex  --figonly --usepdflatex -ftikz --tikzedgelabels --styleonly -o #1tikz.tex}` \\
        but that seems not to have worked. You need to execute `\texttt{pdflatex}` with \\
        the `\texttt{-shell-escape}` option.
      \end{tabular}} 
  } 
}

by Unregistered Visitor on 04/02/09

Something to be wary of

You should not have the \newwrite directive in your \newcommand. If you do and use it a lot you will exhaust the write buffers available. Just move that command out of the \newcommand block. Like: \newwrite\dotfile \newcommand{\digraph}[4][scale=1]{ \immediate\openout\dotfile=#2.dot etc.

by Unregistered Visitor on 10/06/10

Updated version on Github

For an updated version of GraphViz.sty see Mike Prentice's Github version: https://github.com/mprentice/GraphViz-sty

by Mark Aufflick on 02/23/11

Filenames with hyphens

If you want filenames with hyphens in them, put quotes around #2 in the following line: \immediate\write\dotfile{digraph #2 {\string#3}}

by Unregistered Visitor on 04/02/13

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