[YLUG] Parsable Rack Diagrams

[Anthony Simpson]

I can't find anything like a developed solution for what you are trying
to do but can I mention Graphviz - it contains a tool called lefty which
can be scripted to any technical drawing task - its default file format
"dot" is very human readable key:value format with a good syntax for
node-node/node-subnode relationships. good binding for perl etc...
probably worth a look but still a lot of work. If you fancy starting a
project to build a real tool on lefty or something else I'd be keen to
help out. 
Tony

On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 10:44 +0100, Alex Smith wrote:
> Steve Kemp wrote:
> > <boink>
> >
> >     [    psu    ]
> >     [  server1  ]
> >     [  server2  ]
> >     ...
> >     [] legs ;) []
> >
> >   You *might* find that you can draw the diagram in Dia, then
> >  parse the XML - since it would literally just contain 
> >  N * "box + text label" pairs.
> >
> > Steve
> > --
> >   
> Steve,
> 
> Not quite. I already have a handdrawn set of diagrams of about 40 racks. 
> I need to put these into a parsable, text based format. The image 
> section was overstressed by using the phrase "diagram".
> 
> My userspecs are basically to make sure that the racks can be recorded 
> in something parsable, so say *for instance* a perl script is run on 
> whatever the files are stored as, it'll be able to actually do something 
> with the data (which rules out #drawing# these in visio ;)
> 
> Although I appreciate that Dia might do the diagramming bit fine - the 
> prospect of drawing 40 racks and then having to decipher them later 
> makes my palms sweaty.
> 
> Additionally, I need to be able to store certain information about the 
> racks (ie, IP, manufacturer, etc), which I don't think would be easy to 
> do in dia?
> 
> Anyway, thanks for your help - it certainly gives me something to think 
> about. I have a terrible habit of not properly explaining my user-reqs 
> before I email them, so I'll try to be a bit clearer in the future. ;)
> 
> Alex.
> 
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