OmniToTikz

OmniGraffle plug-in to export selection as a tikz graphic.

This automation does the best it can based on what's accessible through the OmniGraffle API. As such, all text is exported but most formatting is lost. I try to structure the tikz statement to ease the post export editing that adds back the formatting.

OmniGraffle 7 Image	tikz Translation

Instructions for installation can be found on Omni's website

You may need to add some tikz libraries (usetikzlibrary) to your document. I've not run this in a bare document to compile the bare minimum list of libraries. I import a local tikzExtras.tex that loads a bunch of items.

How to Use

• Select one or more items in drawing
• Select Export_tikz from the Automation menu
• Copy tikz code from the OmniGraffle Automation Console (Automation → Show Console). Code is enclosed by an adjustbox statement.

What Works

• Exports all lines with color, opacity, weight, and arrows (straight and curved lines only)
• Exports all shapes with fill and stroke color and opacity, line weight, (rectangles and circles)
• Exports Text
  • Some formatting (alignment, wrapping, font size)
  • If the first char has color, that char is colored. If the entire line was colored, still only the first in the tikz export.
  • Carriage returns are converted to tikz '\\' and text align set to match original drawing
  • If font used was Helvetica of any form, it will be set to Helvetica (phv) in the text node. Code able to translate others, just no other fonts in translation table
  • Handles standard unicode math chars though only greater than or equal and less than or equal are in table UNICODE_SWAP. Others can be added to table
• Single level of groups are supported (not group of group)

What Doesn't Work

Lots of things but in particular:

• Bezier and Orthogonal lines
• Groups of groups
• Ignores dashed line format - all lines are solid
• Shapes that are not rectangles or circles
• Shadows
• Line ends other than an arrow
• Imported graphic images
• Selection of part of a drawing that includes lines connected to shapes not in the selection (e.g. going outside of the selection)
• Text
  • OmniGraffle API only provides the formatting of the first char. Therefore all text is formatted per the first char
  • Unknown unicode chars are expressed as a red ?. These need to be added to the translation table UNICODE_SWAP
  • Does not handle emojis
  • Font type other than helvetica is not carried over
• Saving to a file

Notes

I use Zed as my editor for this work. If you want to play with the code in Zed you'll want to add the following to your settings.json file to get javascript code coloring:

  "file_types": {
  "JavaScript": ["omnigrafflejs"],
  }

For graphics foreground/background ordering I took a naive approach that the shape graphic ID defined relative positions between graphic items where lower numbers are closer to the foreground. I did not attempt the same with line objects so lines that ran under a shape will be in the foreground.

This work is based on the OmniGraffle 7 Omni API