On 29-Mar-10 09:14:43, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
Hi,
Lets say I'm documenting a low-level protocol or file format and want to produce a picture such as the TCP header (etc) table (http://izecksohn.com/pedro/pub/tcp_header.jpg), what's the best program to use for that?
Another example: http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/images/TCP-Header.jpg
I have tried Openoffice drawing tool in Writer, and it does not align well. Inkscape might be good as I can snap to grid.
I could use a spreadsheet and then export to picture.
Is there a special purpose application for this that anyone has used and would reccommend?
I need to be able to insert text into the cells or perhaps refer to the cells in some markup way - also the cells should be fixed width as each cell would represent one byte.
Any suggestions please?
How would, for example, a graphics designer go about doing this?
Thanks all, Srdjan
The first one is pure "ASCII ART", so you could do it at the keyboard and then take a screenshot of it :)! (Of course a bash script could be used, with parameters for the cell entries ... :)
The second one is skewed, as seen on my screen. Is that intentional?
In either case (being serious for once) the ideal Unix/Linux-based package for this is groff, using the pic preprocessor (which translates a diagram description language into troff input which then draws the diagram). The output is PostScript (PS), which can be coverted (e.g. into JPEG) by the ImageMagick program 'convert'.
I could prepare examples emulating your two above for study, but don't have time right now (maybe later today, maybe even later).
Ted.
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