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Sometimes I need to draw simple shapes into plain text documentation file. What application can do this? Last time I've used such an app under MS-DOS :) (It was called Flow or something like that.)

Using standard ASCII characters:

--------------          --------------
|   Source   |--------->|   Source   |
|   File 1   |<---------|   File 2   |
--------------          --------------

Possibly also using good old table-drawing characters brought back to life by Unicode:

╔═══════════╤═══╗     ┌─────────┐
║ Semaphore │ A ║     │ Queue   │
╚═══════════╧═══╝     └─────────┘

I need this for Windows.

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3
7

Try TorchSoft ASCII Art Studio

  • works on Windows
  • supports shapes, tables
  • text mode for easy editing
  • freehand drawing
  • conversion from picture to ASCII
  • it has a 30 day trial
  • single user license is 29.95 $

enter image description here

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4

You can use JavE:

  • closed source freeware
  • Cross-platform (Java) (java -jar jave5.jar)

enter image description here

Also it contains a pretty nice math formula editor:

enter image description here

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3

You can use asciiflow:

  • proprietary, free of charge
  • online
  • can upload files to Google Drive
  • basic shapes:

enter image description here

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2

FAR Manager has an internal editor with "Draw Lines" capability (Press F11, then select "Draw lines"). May be enough for your purposes.

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2

What you show in your example looks a lot like UML.

If sequence diagrams are what you need, here's a tool that does both ASCII and Unicode

PlantUML, Open Source

http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/ascii_art.html

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3
  • Although to produce diagrams using this tool, declarations are required based on which diagrams are drawn, proposed tool looks quite valuable for special-purpose charting – thank you. – miroxlav May 29 '14 at 19:48
  • Up 1 if you like it ;-) – Agostino May 29 '14 at 21:35
  • – it is good your answer is here to show potentially useful UML tool, it might find its use in special cases. But for standard ASCII-drawing (as I expected in my question) it looks to be too difficult. I think I can't achieve shapes shown in the question without studying the tool's language first. This is why I decided not to upvote. – miroxlav May 29 '14 at 22:05

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