What tool to use to draw file tree diagram

As promised, here is my Cairo version. I scripted it with Lua, using lfs to walk the directories. I love these little challenges, as they allow me to explore APIs I wanted to dig for quite some time...
lfs and LuaCairo are both cross-platform, so it should work on other systems (tested on French WinXP Pro SP3).

I made a first version drawing file names as I walked the tree. Advantage: no memory overhead. Inconvenience: I have to specify the image size beforehand, so listings are likely to be cut off.

So I made this version, first walking the directory tree, storing it in a Lua table. Then, knowing the number of files, creating the canvas to fit (at least vertically) and drawing the names.
You can easily switch between PNG rendering and SVG one. Problem with the latter: Cairo generates it at low level, drawing the letters instead of using SVG's text capability. Well, at least, it guarantees accurate rending even on systems without the font. But the files are bigger... Not really a problem if you compress it after, to have a .svgz file.
Or it shouldn't be too hard to generate the SVG directly, I used Lua to generate SVG in the past.

-- LuaFileSystem <http://www.keplerproject.org/luafilesystem/>
require"lfs"
-- LuaCairo <http://www.dynaset.org/dogusanh/>
require"lcairo"
local CAIRO = cairo


local PI = math.pi
local TWO_PI = 2 * PI

--~ local dirToList = arg[1] or "C:/PrgCmdLine/Graphviz"
--~ local dirToList = arg[1] or "C:/PrgCmdLine/Tecgraf"
local dirToList = arg[1] or "C:/PrgCmdLine/tcc"
-- Ensure path ends with /
dirToList = string.gsub(dirToList, "([^/])$", "%1/")
print("Listing: " .. dirToList)
local fileNb = 0

--~ outputType = 'svg'
outputType = 'png'

-- dirToList must have a trailing slash
function ListDirectory(dirToList)
  local dirListing = {}
  for file in lfs.dir(dirToList) do
    if file ~= ".." and file ~= "." then
      local fileAttr = lfs.attributes(dirToList .. file)
      if fileAttr.mode == "directory" then
        dirListing[file] = ListDirectory(dirToList .. file .. '/')
      else
        dirListing[file] = ""
      end
      fileNb = fileNb + 1
    end
  end
  return dirListing
end

--dofile[[../Lua/DumpObject.lua]] -- My own dump routine
local dirListing = ListDirectory(dirToList)
--~ print("\n" .. DumpObject(dirListing))
print("Found " .. fileNb .. " files")

--~ os.exit()

-- Constants to change to adjust aspect
local initialOffsetX = 20
local offsetY = 50
local offsetIncrementX = 20
local offsetIncrementY = 12
local iconOffset = 10

local width = 800 -- Still arbitrary
local titleHeight = width/50
local height = offsetIncrementY * (fileNb + 1) + titleHeight
local outfile = "CairoDirTree." .. outputType

local ctxSurface
if outputType == 'svg' then
  ctxSurface = cairo.SvgSurface(outfile, width, height)
else
  ctxSurface = cairo.ImageSurface(CAIRO.FORMAT_RGB24, width, height)
end
local ctx = cairo.Context(ctxSurface)

-- Display a file name
-- file is the file name to display
-- offsetX is the indentation
function DisplayFile(file, bIsDir, offsetX)
  if bIsDir then
    ctx:save()
    ctx:select_font_face("Sans", CAIRO.FONT_SLANT_NORMAL, CAIRO.FONT_WEIGHT_BOLD)
    ctx:set_source_rgb(0.5, 0.0, 0.7)
  end

  -- Display file name
  ctx:move_to(offsetX, offsetY)
  ctx:show_text(file)

  if bIsDir then
    ctx:new_sub_path() -- Position independent of latest move_to
    -- Draw arc with absolute coordinates
    ctx:arc(offsetX - iconOffset, offsetY - offsetIncrementY/3, offsetIncrementY/3, 0, TWO_PI)
    -- Violet disk
    ctx:set_source_rgb(0.7, 0.0, 0.7)
    ctx:fill()
    ctx:restore() -- Restore original settings
  end

  -- Increment line offset
  offsetY = offsetY + offsetIncrementY
end

-- Erase background (white)
ctx:set_source_rgb(1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
ctx:paint()

--~ ctx:set_line_width(0.01)

-- Draw in dark blue
ctx:set_source_rgb(0.0, 0.0, 0.3)
ctx:select_font_face("Sans", CAIRO.FONT_SLANT_NORMAL, CAIRO.FONT_WEIGHT_BOLD)
ctx:set_font_size(titleHeight)
ctx:move_to(5, titleHeight)
-- Display title
ctx:show_text("Directory tree of " .. dirToList)

-- Select font for file names
ctx:select_font_face("Sans", CAIRO.FONT_SLANT_NORMAL, CAIRO.FONT_WEIGHT_NORMAL)
ctx:set_font_size(10)
offsetY = titleHeight * 2

-- Do the job
function DisplayDirectory(dirToList, offsetX)
  for k, v in pairs(dirToList) do
--~ print(k, v)
    if type(v) == "table" then
      -- Sub-directory
      DisplayFile(k, true, offsetX)
      DisplayDirectory(v, offsetX + offsetIncrementX)
    else
      DisplayFile(k, false, offsetX)
    end
  end
end

DisplayDirectory(dirListing, initialOffsetX)

if outputType == 'svg' then
    cairo.show_page(ctx)
else
  --cairo.surface_write_to_png(ctxSurface, outfile)
  ctxSurface:write_to_png(outfile)
end

ctx:destroy()
ctxSurface:destroy()

print("Found " .. fileNb .. " files")

Of course, you can change the styles. I didn't draw the connection lines, I didn't saw it as necessary. I might add them optionally later.


Graphviz - from the web page:

The Graphviz layout programs take descriptions of graphs in a simple text language, and make diagrams in several useful formats such as images and SVG for web pages, Postscript for inclusion in PDF or other documents; or display in an interactive graph browser. (Graphviz also supports GXL, an XML dialect.)

It's the simplest and most productive tool I've found to create a variety of boxes-and-lines diagrams. I have and use Visio and OmniGraffle, but there's always the temptation to make "just one more adjustment".

It's also quite easy to write code to produce the "dot file" format that Graphiz consumes, so automated diagram production is also nicely within reach.


Why could you not just make a file structure on the Windows file system and populate it with your desired names, then use a screen grabber like HyperSnap (or the ubiquitous Alt-PrtScr) to capture a section of the Explorer window.

I did this when 'demoing' an internet application which would have collapsible sections, I just had to create files that looked like my desired entries.

HyperSnap gives JPGs at least (probably others but I've never bothered to investigate).

Or you could screen capture the icons +/- from Explorer and use them within MS Word Draw itself to do your picture, but I've never been able to get MS Word Draw to behave itself properly.


Copying and pasting from the MS-DOS tree command might also work for you. Examples:

tree

C:\Foobar>tree
C:.
├───FooScripts
├───barconfig
├───Baz
│   ├───BadBaz
│   └───Drop
...

tree /F

C:\Foobar>tree
C:.
├───FooScripts
│    foo.sh
├───barconfig
│    bar.xml
├───Baz
│   ├───BadBaz
│   │    badbaz.xml
│   └───Drop
...

tree /A

C:\Foobar>tree /A
C:.
+---FooScripts
+---barconfig
+---Baz
¦   +---BadBaz
¦   \---Drop
...

tree /F /A

C:\Foobar>tree /A
C:.
+---FooScripts
¦    foo.sh
+---barconfig
¦    bar.xml
+---Baz
¦   +---BadBaz
¦   ¦    badbaz.xml
¦   \---Drop
...

Syntax [source]

tree [drive:][path] [/F] [/A]

drive:\path — Drive and directory containing disk for display of directory structure, without listing files.

/F — Include all files living in every directory.

/A — Replace graphic characters used for linking lines with ext characters , instead of graphic characters. /a is used with code pages that do not support graphic characters and to send output to printers that do not properly interpret graphic characters.