Commutative diagram generating app

Question

There are various types of commutative diagrams in mathematics, but several of them are the most common place. For example, a square (with 4 objects), a right triangle (with 3 objects), two adjacent squares (with 6 objects) and so on.

It seems that there are several packages for generating commutative diagrams, but almost none of them are easy, in the sense it's really difficult to remember how to write a code for a commutative diagram. For me, I need to find an example every time and then just substitute things to get my own diagram.

I've always wondered, if there is a web-app, like a webpage, a really user-friendly GUI, where you already have the shape of a comm. diagram, then you just put in objects and different kind of arrows in the boxes, and then finally, the web-app just generate the LaTeX code for the comm. diagram.

Is there such things?

Matthew Leingang · Answer

Not that I know of. Most people who want to make commutative diagrams are happy to write TeX code. :-) TeXShop for the Mac does have a GUI for matrices, which could possibly be adapted to something for commutative diagrams.

Answered by Matthew Leingang on March 7, 2021

Mephisto · Answer

Check out the templates in diagxy.

Kristen · Answer

It would be super easy to write your own macros so that you didn't have to re-type the code each time:

newcommand{commsquare}[8]
{
xymatrix
{
#1ar[r]^{#2}ar[d]_{#3} & #4ar[d]^{#5}
#6ar[r]_{#7} & #8
}
}

And then when you wanted to include the square, you just call:

commsquare{M_1}{d}{f_1}{M_0}{f_0}{N_1}{d'}{N_0}

Andrew Stacey · Answer

I just stumbled on this from an answer at MathOverflow.  It's not a web-app but designed to run on your own computer.  The summary states:

Here is tcl/tk script for visually generating
latex and xypic arrays.

You can download it from the author's webpage: http://www.math.purdue.edu/~dvb/scripts/arraymaker (the author being Donu Arapura).

I've not tested it so can't speak from experience, but the code looks very nice!

Eschatum Verus · Answer

I see that the question is old, but it falls out as the first link in google search, so this answer may be useful to many.
https://tikzcd.yichuanshen.de/

Commutative diagram generating app

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