You can also see the PDF version.
If you see the sign 🚧, this chapter is a work in progress!
Text boxes that looklikethis stand for keyboard shortcuts. For example: CtrlAltF2
Text that looks like this are links. You can click them to open the link in your default web browser.
Text boxes that looklikethis stand for file paths or directory paths. For example: ~.local.configPaiagram
You can also read this manual in this language:
Paiagram is an application for visualizing and managing vehicle timetable and routes. Paiagram organizes stations and intervals between stations in a graph, and organize different services using vehicles. Similar products include:
Paiagram is designed with usability, portability, versatility, and internationalization in mind. In fact, it is possible to manage and visualize an entire nation’s railway network with Paiagram. For this purpose, Paigram’s used terminologies that are neutral, i.e. not related to a specific method of transportation.
Paiagram is licensed under the AGPL 3.0 license. The license text is also available as a PDF attachment.
This documentation is available under the CC BY 4.0 International License.
Transport enthusiasts can use Paiagram to track down vehicles and check schedules.
Transport simulation game players can use Paiagram to timetable vehicles.
Transport Managers can use Paiagram to schedule services.
Anyone can use Paiagram to kill some time :-)
Paiagram is the mix of two words with different roots. The first being “排”, which means to make or to organize, and its Pinyin is “pái”. The second word is, of course, diagram. Combined they form the word Paiagram.
You can download Paiagram from Github releases or try it online. The online version’s performance would be worse compared to native versions, but the difference is usually acceptable. You can also download the webpage and run it locally in your browser.
Paiagram uses a graph-based system to store all stations and intervals between stations. All stations are represented as nodes in the graph, and each interval is an edge between two nodes. Vehicles could traverse via edges, and visit nodes along the way.
For performance sake, internally, the edges in Paiagram are not directional, instead they are bi-directional. However, you can manually specify the edge’s direction.
For performance sake, internally, there could be only one edge betwee two nodes. However, you can specify extra nodes and connect from those nodes. Those extra nodes would instead be of “waypoint” type.
The graph model allows easy manipulation of network, and allows for managing much larger networks. This also means that Paiagram won’t have the Nobori/Kudari settings in OuDiaSecond, or Shangxing/Xiaxing properties in qETRC/pyETRC & friends.
In order to display a track section, you must specify a “Displayed Line”. A displayed line holds a set of stations. The distance between stations depends on the interval’s length. Yet, it could always be manually adjsuted.
Labels, annotations, and lines on the diagram would automatically avoid colliding into each other, for better display.
Paiagram doesn’t support directly exporting to PDF or printing, but you can export each page to Typst, and further render that to SVG/PNG/PDF. The spacing on diagram pages would be reserved. Exporting directly to PDF, and exporting to LaTeX, docx, odt, etc. would never be supported.
Paiagram uses a vehicle-based system, that is, services are not the basic unit of the network, rather they are properties attached to a vehicle’s timetable entries.
The vehicle-based system cannot 100% emulate real-world systems. Besides the freight train network in Canada and U.S., which doesn’t even have a schedule hence it is impossible to represent it in Paiagram, public transit networks such as bus networks might go with a dispatch based system, i.e., which vehicle is running the service is not important, and it is fine as long as there is a vehicle running. Take the TransLink’s bus lines 15 and 50 as an example. This Metro Vancouver transit company has a dispatch based bus system.
(TODO)
The graph is the top-level representation of the network. Each .paiagram file can hold one graph and one graph only.
The diagram is 1. a collection of vehicle times and 2. a visual representation of the graph. Each .paiagram file can hold multiple diagrams. It is not recommended to have multiple diagrams for different types of services (e.g. local, express, freight). Instead, keep all services that runs at the same time in the same diagram, and use filtering to only show the services you want. The multi-diagram feature is mainly for representing the network’s status in different operation periods (e.g. normal operation, holiday schedule, special event schedule).
Vehicles are entities that traverse the graph. Each vehicle belongs to a diagram.
Vehicles can be linked across diagrams. This is useful when you have multiple diagrams for different operation periods, and you want to represent a vehicle that runs across multiple operation periods. Sometimes a vehicle may have a very small change in its timetable for one diagram, while other parts of the timetable remain the same. In this case, you can use vehicle patches to only specify the changed parts, and link it to the original vehicle.
On top of using the graphical user interface, you can also use the command line interface on the desktop version for quick opening,
Paiagram features 3 arrival types and 4 departure types:
| At | The vehicle would arrive at the station AT the given time. |
| For | The vehicle would travel FOR the given amount of time between the current and the previous station. |
| Flexible | The arrival time is FLEXIBLE. |
| At | The vehicle would depart from the station AT the given time. |
| For | The vehicle would stay at the station FOR the given amount of time |
| Flexible | The departure time is FLEXIBLE |
| Non-stop | The vehicle DOES NOT STOP at this station |
The “At” type is the most common type you’d see on real-world timetables. If you have a train arriving at Shinagawa at 09:35:21, and departing at 09:35:41, you can specify its arrival and departure types as “At: 09:35:21” and “At: 09:35:41”, respectively. Alternatively, if the stopping time is more important, and you don’t want to manually calculate the stopping time, you can specify the stopping time to be “For: 00:20”. If you have a train departing from Stuttgart, and you’re not sure when it would depart, you can set the departure type as “Flexible”, to avoid confusion.
When only the departure station and terminal stations’ times are important, you can set the stations in between’s time to be “Flexible”. Paiagram would handle them automatically.
The diagram is the most important part in the program. You can open the diagram via the CtrlD shortcut.
Vehicles can have events bound to a timetable entry. There are currently these events available:
The interface is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. The workspace is split into two parts: the properties panel on the left and the main canvas on the right.
The properties panel contains information and setting for the currently selected object. You can also multi-select objects to edit their properties in bulk. Nevertheless, objects that don’t share common properties cannot be edited in bulk.
The main canvas is where you can visualize and edit your timetable graph. You can dock and undock, add or remove tabs as needed. However, you cannot add or remove tabs from the properties panel.
The overview tab provides statistics and general information about the current file opened, including:
Each table would feature a search bar at the top. You can use it to filter the table entries based on your input.
The search bar currently supports matching Pinyin, Double Pinyin (Microsoft scheme) and Romaji for Chinese and Japanese text.
The diagnostics tab provides information about potential issues in the current file opened. You can also access the tab from the status bar
The status bar is located at the bottom of the window. It provides quick access to various functions and information, including:
The vehicle view tab is opened upon selecting a vehicle from the main canvas. You can edit the vehicle’s timetable entries, services, stops, and other properties here.
The global search window allows you to search for various objects in the current file opened. You can use the CtrlShiftF shortcut to open the global search window.
Shortcuts are what makes power users. Here are all shortcuts listed out:
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Close tab | CtrlW |
| Close app | AltF4 |
| Open file | CtrlO |
| Save file | CtrlS |
| Save file as | CtrlShiftS |
| Undo | CtrlZ |
| Redo | CtrlY |
| Cut | CtrlX |
| Copy | CtrlC |
| Paste | CtrlV |
| Select all | CtrlA |
| Find | CtrlF |
| Find next | F3 |
| Find previous | ShiftF3 |
| Global search | CtrlShiftF |
Paiagram supports importing diagram data from foreign formats including:
Data specific to one application, e.g. window placement settings in OuDiaSecond, will not be respected.
Importing qETRC data is straightforward: import and it should just work. Train classes, services, trains (交路), stations, and station intervals are all handled correctly in Paiagram.
OuDiaSecond’s internal structure is very different, and it misses some basic features in Paiagram.
Stations
Importing stations is fine
Intervals
OuDiaSecond provides minimal information about intervals connecting stations, only the stations the interval connects. Due to this lack of information, intervals imported would always have a length of 1.00km.
Services
Most services should work fine.
Importing JGRPP orders exports is fairly limited, since it could contain conditional orders that cannot be known by Paiagram. The only condition Paiagram understands and can adapt from the export is the time.
Paiagram supports saving and exporting to various formats
.paiagramThe .paiagram format is the default saving format for Paiagram.
.csvYou can export single vehicles, single services, stations info, and interval info as .csv files. You cannot export the entire graph as a .csv file. For information on exporting graphs, see Section 5.3.
Subjects that can be exported:
Vehicle schedule
Service schedule
Vehicle services
.dotGraphs can be exported to GraphViz .dot files.
You can export diagrams to Typst code, which can be then further processed and rendered via the Typst program.
Notes attached to a timetable entry would be translated to labels in JGRPP. You can also specify the colour by adding a <colour>:(content) prefix. For example:
red: Return to Paddington Stationpurple: Go to Shinkansen Centreall contain a valid colour tag.
JGRPP features scheduled dispatch, a way to specify when a vehicle would depart from a station. Scheduled dispatch slots could optionally have a tag. If they do have a tag, their
You may be overwhelmed with the number of arrival and departure types in Paiagram compared to qETRC/pyETRC.
Paiagram is built using Rust. If you’re from NixOS, you can skip the next chapter!
Paiagram requires the following dependencies:
Paiagram uses the Fluent standard for translatons. You can submit pull requests for translations on GitHub.
Please be in mind that this is a community project, so please try to avoid submitting unreviewed machine or LLM based translation.
There aren’t many external resources for Paiagram yet.
Special thanks to: