Getting Graphical Output from Catlab.jl

General Usage
, ,
1

::::::::::::::
Project.toml
::::::::::::::
[deps]
Catlab = “134e5e36-593f-5add-ad60-77f754baafbe”
GATlab = “f0ffcf3b-d13a-433e-917c-cc44ccf5ead2”

can supply Manifest.toml if of interest

running snippet below

from : The Category of Graphs · Catlab.jl

using GATlab, Catlab.Theories
using Catlab.CategoricalAlgebra
using Catlab.Graphs
using Catlab.Graphics

draw(g; kw…) = to_graphviz(g; graph_attrs, node_attrs, kw…)
draw(f::ACSetTransformation; kw…) =
to_graphviz(f; node_labels=true, edge_labels=true, draw_codom=false, kw…)

to_graphviz(SchGraph)

produces output

Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Graph(“G”, true, “neato”, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Statement[Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Node(“n1”, OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}(:label => “V”)), Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Node(“n2”, OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}(:label => “E”)), Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Edge(Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.NodeID[Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.NodeID(“n2”, “”, “”), Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.NodeID(“n1”, “”, “”)], OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}(:label => “src”)), Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Edge(Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.NodeID[Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.NodeID(“n2”, “”, “”), Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.NodeID(“n1”, “”, “”)], OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}(:label => “tgt”))], OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}(), OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}(:margin => “0”, :shape => “ellipse”), OrderedCollections.OrderedDict{Symbol, Union{String, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.Html}}())

which looks pretty well formed …

How does one get a persistent image, say graphics format file or pdf file from the above output?

Catlab info from Manifest.toml - deps do not appear to contain graphics/plotting support
[[deps.Catlab]]
deps = [“Compose”, “DataStructures”, “GeneralizedGenerated”, “JSON”, “LightXML”, “LinearAlgebra”, “Logging”, “MLStyle”, “Pkg”, “PrettyTables”, “Random”, “Reexport”, “Requires”, “SparseArrays”, “StaticArrays”, “Statistics”, “StructEquality”, “Tables”]
git-tree-sha1 = “40552f780d19dff2bfbcad8e810fac53b28c5264”
uuid = “134e5e36-593f-5add-ad60-77f754baafbe”
version = “0.14.2”

sensible paths seem to be
add package Graphviz_jll to use Julia implemented Graphviz
or install Graphviz externally and use it’s plotting capabilities
Cairo graphics seem associated with external Graphviz
( I am mostly interested in using the Julia - Catlab environnent to
support learning about and using applied category theory. )
Thanks in advance,
Roger Smith

2

Welcome! May I suggest some formatting to make your post more accessible?
Three backticks are used for code blocks.

function here(is)
    some_code = is
end

By the way, almost everyone is at Julia con 2025, so an answer to your question may be delayed by a few minutes. :wink:

3

You need to have Graphviz installed on your system path. If you follow the standard instructions for installing graphviz on your operating system, it should work.

4

an idiom that does the trick, with the Graphviz Bin in the system path

open(“t1.pdf”,“w”) do f
write(f, Catlab.Graphics.Graphviz.run_graphviz( to_graphviz(SchGraph); format=“pdf” ) )
end

thanks,
roger