hourgraph

Creates an SVG from a TOML definition of a time plan / gantt chart

Originally written for my PhD panel 1 topic project analysis report, as I realised that not only have I manually creates a number of these, but I'm going to have to create a bunch more in the future....

• Current version:
• Changelog: https://github.com/sbrl/hourgraph/blob/master/Changelog.md

Installation

Install with npm:

sudo npm install --global hourgraph

Or locally:

npm install hourgraph

Usage

There are 2 parts to using hourgraph. First, you need a configuration / definition file for your time plan / gantt chart. Then, you need to call the CLI to render it to SVG (PNG is currently not supported, but Inkscape can be used to convert - see below).

Definition file

hourgraph takes a TOML file as input. Examples files can be found in the examples directory. In short, the format of a valid time plan file is as follows:

# Specify global options here
width = 1920
height = 1080

# Tasks are defined next. Each should be headed with "[[task]]" like so:
[[task]]
name = "Make apple juice"
start = 2
duration = 2

# The above are the minimum required properties.
# Detailed explanations can be found below.


# Optional section, allows customisation of the visual style of the resulting svg
[style]
# Styling options go in here. See default.toml in the src/ directory for more information as to supported properties here.
# Link: https://github.com/sbrl/hourgraph/blob/master/src/default.toml

Detailed explanation of the properties on a [[task]]:

Property	Type	Required	Meaning
name	string	yes	The name of the task (multiline strings are not currently handled correctly)
start	number	yes	The point at which the task starts
duration	number	yes	The number of units which the task lasts for.
colour	string	no	The colour of the bar on the graph for this task. Overrides the global value specified in the [style] section.
ghost_colour	string	no	Specifies the colour of the ghost bar from the left-hand side up to the actual bar itself. Overrides the global value specified in the [style] section.

CLI

If you've installed hourgraph locally, substitute all instances of hourgraph for path/to/node_modules/.bin/hourgraph (basically the path to the hourgraph entry point).

Once you've got your definition file written, you can now call hourgraph to render it. By default, hourgrah reads and writes from and to the standard input and output:

hourgraph <path/to/file.toml >path/to/file.svg

However, the --input and --output flags can be used to specify filenames to read from and/or write to instead:

hourgraph --input path/to/file.toml --output path/to/file.svg

Help text can be displayed using the --help argument:

hourgraph --help

Once you've got your SVG, you're done! If you'd prefer a PNG though, you can use the Inkscape CLI to convert it:

inkscape -o path/to/output.png path/to/file.svg

You can also specify a custom width or height to render to (maintaining aspect ratio):

# Specify the width:
inkscape -w 3840 -e path/to/output.png path/to/file.svg
# Specify the height:
inkscape -h 2160 -e path/to/output.png path/to/file.svg

Read-world use

• I'm using it in reports for my PhD in Computer Science!
• (Are you using this project? Get in touch by opening an issue)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome as PRs! Don't forget to say that you donate your contribution under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 in your PR comment.

Licence

This project is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. See the LICENSE file in this repository for the full text.