Novagraph Chartist

Editors' ReviewDownload.com staffNovember 8, 2008This tool provides a great deal of functionality for creating professional-looking flowcharts and organizational charts. The well-organized interface lets you create chart elements with a minimum of action. The program has a wide choice of diagram elements with customizable looks, sizes and colors. You can replicate symbols and apply changes to several at once. Novagraph Chartist maintains routing lines among symbols, and you can add your own symbols, although it takes some time because the program uses a special scripting language. The symbols can display images, embed various audio or video objects, and link to external documents. One inconvenience is that you can't type text directly onto the chart--you have to insert charts into other applications via OLE or save them in HTML, XML, VML or SVG formats. The program would be quite difficult to master without the detailed help file. By virtue of its functionality and price, Chartist is aimed primarily at professionals.