English | 日本語
This project is an independent Rust implementation that draws on the original tchart (Tohoku Gakuin University) and tchart-coffee (University of Tsukuba). See Acknowledgements.
A small tool for sketching digital timing charts (clock / data / bus / control waveforms) from a short text description. Useful for digital circuit / FPGA / HDL work, design notes, and quick "what does this waveform look like?" sketches in discussions.
You write a chart in TCML (Timing Chart Markup Language):
@title Request / Acknowledge handshake
@slant 0
@clock(pos)
clk
request ___@{r}~~~~~~~~@1____
acknowledge _____@{a}~~________
ready _____~~~~~~~~@2__
data_bus =?====X==DATA=====X?=
@-> (@{r}, @{a}) req → ack
@-> (@1, @2, red)
and tchart renders it as:
Try it in your browser: https://nodamushi.github.io/tchart-rust/
Also distributed as a single CLI binary (Linux / Windows) and a single self-contained offline HTML editor. No Node.js / runtime / installer required.
The syntax-level differences from the predecessors are deliberately small. The notable additions / improvements are:
- Auto-sized signal name column. Signal names of any length are laid out automatically; no width hints or hand-padded spaces are required.
- Cross-signal arrows (
@->). Mark positions in waveforms with@{name}(or short numeric anchors like@1), then draw arrows between them with optional colour, line style, arrow head, and label. Useful for showing causal or timing relationships across signals. @clockauto-expansion. Declare a clock as a single line; the body is generated automatically, with positive / negative / both / no edge markers.- WaveDrom export.
tchart wavedromconverts the same TCML into WaveJSON, so a rough sketch in TCML can be handed off towavedrom-clifor datasheet-quality rendering. (Lossy: WaveDrom does not model every TCML feature.)
Source TCML: docs/images/sample.tc / docs/images/arrow.tc / docs/images/clock_marks.tc
Grab the latest binary from Releases.
VER=v0.1.0
curl -fsSLO https://github.com/nodamushi/tchart-rust/releases/download/$VER/tchart-$VER-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
tar -xzf tchart-$VER-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
cd tchart-$VER-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
./tchart svg chart.tc
./tchart png chart.tcDownload tchart-v0.1.0-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip from the Releases page, extract it, then:
.\tchart.exe svg chart.tc
.\tchart.exe png chart.tctchart svg <INPUT> # render TCML to SVG
tchart png <INPUT> # render TCML to PNG
tchart src <SVG_OR_PNG> # extract embedded TCML
tchart wavedrom <INPUT> # convert TCML to WaveDrom JSON
tchart batch <svg|png> <INPUT>... -o <DIR> # process multiple files
Examples:
tchart svg chart.tc # → chart.svg next to input
tchart png chart.tc -o out.png # explicit output path
tchart svg chart.tc --font-size 14 # custom font size
tchart src chart.png -o - # extract embedded TCML to stdout
tchart batch svg samples/*.tc -o out/ # batch convertCommon options:
| Flag | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
-o, --output <PATH> |
Output file (for batch, output directory) |
next to input |
--font <FILE> |
Default font file | system font auto-detect |
--font-size <SIZE> |
Font size in px (> 0) | 12.0 |
-h, --help |
Help |
For building from source, see tchart-cli/README.md.
- Editor: https://nodamushi.github.io/tchart-rust/
- Help (English): https://nodamushi.github.io/tchart-rust/help/tcml-format.en.html
- Help (Japanese): https://nodamushi.github.io/tchart-rust/help/tcml-format.html
Browser "Save as…" on the editor URL gives you a single HTML file that runs offline (CSS / JS / wasm / help are all inlined).
import init, { render_tcml } from './tchart-web/pkg/tchart_web.js';
await init();
const svg = render_tcml("Clock _~_~_~");The detailed spec documents under docs/spec/ are currently Japanese only.
For the TCML syntax reference, the hosted help is available in both languages:
- TCML format reference (English): https://nodamushi.github.io/tchart-rust/help/tcml-format.en.html
- TCML format reference (Japanese): https://nodamushi.github.io/tchart-rust/help/tcml-format.html
Internal spec documents (Japanese):
Deep thanks to the authors of the following prior work:
- Original tchart (Tohoku Gakuin University)
- tchart-coffee (University of Tsukuba)
- WaveDrom — for high-quality, datasheet-grade timing diagrams