SignalFlowGrapher

Version 2.1.3

Minor update from 2.1.0: signalflowgrapher-register will now also work on Linux and macOS.

This version can be installed with pip or downloaded and run locally. Please follow the steps in the section Getting started.

Please report all issues you find to hanspeter.schmid@fhnw.ch or create an issue on github, https://github.com/hanspi42/signalflowgrapher/issues

Getting started

The easiest way is to install it with pip install signalflowgrapher. After that, you can start it with the command signalflowgrapher. On Windows, MacOS and Linux, you can associate .sfg files with the signalflowgrapher by running signalflowgrapher-register, this will also create a shortcut on the desktop. signalflowgrapher-deregister removes the association again.

If you want to download it and run it locally, then clone or download from https://github.com/hanspi42/signalflowgrapher, e.g. using git clone https://github.com/hanspi42/signalflowgrapher. Next:

Install Dependencies

To install the dependencies, you can use either Miniforge or Python environments.

With Miniforge

• If you do not have it yet, download Miniforge from https://conda-forge.org/download/ and install it.
• Open a miniforge prompt.
• cd to the top directory of this repository.
• Build a python environment with conda env create --file=requirements/sfg.yml.
• Activate the evironment with conda activate sfg.
• cd src.
• Start the signalflowgrapher with python -m signalflowgrapher.

With Python evironments

• Get the latest version of Python from https://www.python.org/
• Open the repository’s root directory in a terminal
• Create virtual environment using the command python -m venv sfg
• On Windows run sfg\Scripts\activate.bat or sfg\Scripts\Activate.ps1
• On Unix or MacOS run source sfg/bin/activate
• Run pip install -r requirements/base.txt
• cd src.
• Start the signalflowgrapher with python -m signalflowgrapher.

User manual and tips

Manual

There is none yet, but to familiarize yourself with signal-flow graphs, you can

• watch the signalflowgrapher intro video on https://tube.switch.ch/videos/609c0510 ,
• Watch "Signal-Flow Graphs in 12 short lessons" on https://tube.switch.ch/channels/d206c96c?order=episodes ,
• Read our papers, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10470-018-1131-7 and http://rdcu.be/naw5 .

Tips

• The signalflowgrapher supports export as PNG, but you can get nice SVG versions of the graphs by exporting TikZ, converting it to pdf with pdflatex, and then run https://github.com/dawbarton/pdf2svg .

For Developers

Developer documentation

See more details in Developer documentation for V2.0.

Run unit tests and format tests

• Go to the signalflowgrapher\src\main\python directory in a terminal or an anaconda terminal
• Run python -m unittest
• Run flake8 -v

License

This package is distributed under the Artistic License 2.0, which you find in the file LICENSE and on the internet on https://opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-2.0.

Contributors

Many people have discussed this, given feedback, reported issues, ...

The largest code contributions are from Simon Näf, Nicolai Wassermann, Michael Saladin, Pascal Gsell, and Hanspeter Schmid.

Authors of Version 0.2

The first version checked in was the result of a bachelor thesis at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, https://www.fhnw.ch/en/. Students: Simon Näf and Nicolai Wassermann. Advisors: Dominik Gruntz and Hanspeter Schmid. Contact author: hanspeter.schmid@fhnw.ch

Credits

Implemention of Johnson's algorithm: https://github.com/qpwo/python-simple-cycles