gtikz

A visual, drawio-style editor for building diagrams and generating the matching TikZ LaTeX code with one click.

Features

• Drag-and-drop canvas: rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, connectors.
• Resize handles, multi-select, grouping with a labeled dashed box.
• Properties panel: font size, fill/stroke color, bold/italic, rounded corners, arrow head style, line style (solid/dashed/dotted), straight or orthogonal routing.
• One-click Generate TikZ code, with copy-to-clipboard and .tex download.
• Built-in snippet library (preamble, rating-star icon, figure wrapper).
• Save/load diagrams as JSON.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+

Getting started

As a CLI tool (pip / pipx)

pipx install gtikz   # or: pip install gtikz
gtikz start

Then open http://127.0.0.1:18888. gtikz stop shuts it back down. pipx is recommended — it installs gtikz in its own isolated environment, so it won't clash with any other project's dependencies.

Saved diagrams and server logs live under ~/.gtikz/ (override with the GTIKZ_DATA_DIR environment variable). Other commands:

From a checkout (development)

git clone git@github.com:giper45/gtikz.git
cd gtikz
make install
make start

Then open http://127.0.0.1:18888. This runs uvicorn with --reload straight out of the checkout instead of an installed package — see Makefile targets below.

Without make:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn gtikz.main:app --reload --port 18888

Usage

• Pick a tool from the top bar (V select, R rectangle, E ellipse, D diamond, C connector), then click the canvas to place a shape, or click two nodes in sequence to connect them.
• Drag a node to move it; with a single node selected, drag its handles to resize it.
• Edit the selected element's style from the right-hand Properties panel.
• Shift+click to multi-select, then Group (or press G) to wrap the selection in a labeled box.
• Generate TikZ code opens the generated code with options for the figure wrapper, caption, label, preamble and \resizebox.
• Snippets gives you ready-to-copy fragments (preamble, rating icon, etc.).
• Save / Load store diagrams as JSON under ~/.gtikz/diagrams/ (or $GTIKZ_DATA_DIR/diagrams/ if that's set).

Makefile targets

These drive the checkout workflow (.venv + uvicorn). Once installed via pip/pipx, use the gtikz command instead (see above).

Project structure

gtikz/                Python package (installable, ships on PyPI)
├── main.py            App entrypoint, serves the API and the static frontend
├── cli.py              `gtikz start/stop/status/restart/logs` command
├── config.py            Paths: static/examples (in-package), user data (~/.gtikz)
├── models.py            Pydantic schema for a diagram (nodes/edges/groups)
├── storage.py            Save/load diagrams as JSON
├── api/routes.py        REST endpoints
├── tikz/                  Diagram -> TikZ code generation
├── static/               Frontend (vanilla JS + SVG, no build step)
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── css/style.css
│   └── js/                 One module per concern (state, canvas, properties, ...)
└── examples/              Sample diagrams (JSON)

tests/                 pytest suite

Testing

make test

Publishing

Maintainer-only; requires a trusted publisher set up once on the PyPI project pointing at .github/workflows/publish.yml (see the comment at the top of that file). To ship a release: bump VERSION and CHANGELOG.md, tag it and push the tag, then publish a GitHub Release from that tag — the workflow builds and uploads to PyPI automatically. To do it by hand instead: make build then make publish (or make publish-test for TestPyPI first).

Versioning

This project follows Semantic Versioning. See VERSION for the current version and CHANGELOG.md for release notes.

License

MIT