Aloha Bart,

On Nov 13, 2010, at 3:59 PM, Bart Bunting wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> This is a little bit of a vague question but was hopeing that someone
> may have some pointers.
>
> I am trying to create some business processes with both textual
> descriptions of the process in a table format with step numbers and
> descriptions etc.  I was hopeing to be able to automagicaly convert  
> the
> tabular format into a business process diagram.
>
> I was wondering if anyone has done this in the past using org-mode and
> bable some how?
>
> As I am blind I can't successfully create such diagrams using drawing
> software.  It occurred to me though that it should (could) be possible
> to create diagrams from sufficient information in a table structure.
>
> The diagrams are the usual flow chart style of thing with steps and  
> descision
> points causing the flow to branch to another point.  I thought that if
> we had something like the following it may be possible to generate a
> diagram.
>
>
>
> | Step        |  
> Description 
>                                                              | Next  
> Steps       |
> |------------- 
> + 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
> ------------------|
> | Begin       | Begin the  
> process                                                       |  
> Choice1          |
> | Choice1     | Decide if we are big or  
> small.                                          | Big,Small        |
> | Big         | If we are big then do big  
> things                                        | End              |
> | Small       | If we are small then figure out if we are really  
> small or possibly big. | ReallySmall, Big |
> | ReallySmall | Yes we are really  
> small                                                 |  
> End              |
> | End         | The  
> end.                                                                 
> |                  |
> |------------- 
> + 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
> ------------------|
>
>
> This would represent a process where we start, make a choice if we  
> are big or small.  If we are big we do big things and end.  If we  
> are small we make  a choice if we are really small or actually big.   
> If we decide we are actualy big then we go back to the big step.  If  
> not we go on to the end.
>
>
> Anyway just thought I'd ask in case someone had a suggestion how  
> this could be done using org-mode.
>
> Cheers
>
> Bart

This is certainly possible.  Eric Fraga has generated GANTT charts  
from an Org-mode table.  His approach uses an emacs-lisp helper  
function to convert the table to tikz code, and also a LaTeX  
stylesheet to define some tikz elements.  A similar approach might  
work for you.

Eric's post to the list is here:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2010-10/msg00553.html

hth,
Tom
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