One can distinguish three different categories of file formats in yEd:
- Standard Formats
- These formats store the graph structure and all visual and non-visual properties of the graph elements. Thus, no information is lost by saving and opening the same file.
- Alternative Graph Formats
- These formats store the whole graph structure but possibly not any existing property. The range of supported properties depends on the respective format.
- Export Formats
- Graphs can be written to files in an export format, but not retrieved from such a file. Typically, export formats are images, from which an import would be impossible or at least very complicated.
Standard Formats
- GraphML Format ‘.graphml’
- An XML-based graph format that stores structural information of the graph as well as the graphical information and all other properties for the graph’s elements. This format can be used as an interchange format.
- Compressed GraphML Format ‘.graphmlz’
- Same as the GraphML Format. The GraphML file is subsequently losslessly compressed to reduce file size. No information gets lost by this compression.
Alternative Graph Formats
yEd supports a number of other formats to a certain degree. With these formats some information may not be stored and retrieved again.
- yFiles Graph Format ‘.ygf’
- A binary format.
- Graph Modeling Language ‘.gml’
- A human-readable format which can be used as an interchange format.
- Graph Modeling Language XML ‘.xgml’
- Same as Graph Modeling Language Format ‘.gml’, but using XML-based syntax.
- MS Excel 97/2000/2003 ‘.xls’ and MS Excel 2007 ‘*.xlsx’
- Reads the graph structure and custom properties from Excel files. This feature supports a number of means of representing graphs in such files and offers detailed control of the data range to import. More information can be found in the section Excel Import.
- Trivial Graph Format ‘.tgf’
- A simple human-readable format that can be used to read and write the graph structure and label information. No graphical or geometrical information will be stored using this format.
- GEDCOM ‘.ged’
- A human-readable format which encodes genealogical data. Writing to this format is not supported.
- XML + XSL
-
Import of arbitrary XML files. An XSLT stylesheet must be given that transforms the XML input into a valid GraphML. Writing to this format is not supported.
Predefined stylesheets for Ant build scripts, the OWL web ontology language and others are included.
Export Formats
- Windows Bitmap Format ‘.bmp’
-
This option basically exports a screen shot of the current graph. To improve picture quality, anti-aliased rendering will be used.
Note that this format is not available for all yEd versions. - Windows Enhanced Metafile Format ‘.emf’
- Exporting to this vector graphics format is useful if one wants to add high-quality diagrams to Windows text processing and graphics applications like Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint. EMF is the successor to WMF.
- Encapsulated PostScript Format ‘.eps’
- EPS is a Document Structuring Conventions-conforming PostScript document that can be placed within another PostScript document. As such, EPS is a vector graphics format.
- Graphics Interchange Format ‘.gif’
- This option basically exports a screen shot of the current graph.
- HTML Image Map ‘.html’
- This option will export a HTML page that contains a screen shot of the current graph as an image together with an associated image map. The image can optionally be split into multiple tiles.
- JPEG Image Format ‘.jpg’
- This option basically exports a screen shot of the current graph. To improve picture quality, anti-aliased rendering will be used.
- Portable Document Format ‘.pdf’
- Exporting to PDF enables high-quality diagrams in vector graphics format.
- Standard PNG Image Writer ‘.png’
- This option basically exports a screen shot of the current graph. To improve picture quality, anti-aliased rendering will be used.
- Scalable Vector Graphics Format ‘.svg’
- An XML-based graphics format.
- Zipped Scalable Vector Graphics Format ‘.svgz’
- Same as Scalable Vector Graphics Format ‘.svg’. The SVG file is subsequently compressed using ZIP to reduce file size.