How can I export a graph with "working" folders?

Question

The question might sound weird at first but let me explain. I made a graph to portrait a huge amount of information in one big sort of contiguous format. While yEd is great for that I can't bother my boss or clients to work with graphml files so I was looking for a way to export the graph in such a way that the client can easily access the data. It needs to be clear and not overwhelming, so it would be best if the clients could just collapse and open the folder structures as they please just like in yEd itself. Is there a format where this is possible? Of course in formats like jpg or pdf this would not be possible. Thank you in advance for your answers. I would also like to ask you to keep the answers as simple as possible, as I am neither a native English speaker nor a software genius. Thank you very much! : )

Answer 1

What you are asking for is not possible unless

1. you are using yEd, or
2. you are using yEd Live, or
3. you are using a custom application that was specifically developed to provide the features you are looking for.

Since you stated that you are not "a software genius", I take it you are not software developer/programmer. This means option 3 is not for you.

Since you "can't bother your boss or clients to work with graphml files", I take it you mean you cannot ask your boss and/or clients to use yEd. This means option 1 is not for you either.

This leaves you with option 2. While strictly speaking this is asking your boss/clients to "work with graphml files" as well, they can do so from within their preferred internet browser which might be less of an obstacle than having to install yEd.

Comments

Hello, thank you for your answer! You are right, I am not a software developer or programmer per se so excuse me if this question might sound a little bit naive but how would you approach this problem creating a custom application. First of all, would you try and use the graphML sourcecode of the project as a base or a completely differend approach? It's okay if you dont want to answer this because it might not be in the interest of the developers to provide ideas on how to alter/work with their code outside of yEd.
YEd Live woud be an option but my boss is very concerned with the safety of the data so all server based solutions must be reviewed by him first.
You have been very helpful so far and let me tell you yEd is a very useful and easy to work with programm!

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Re.:

how would you approach this problem creating a custom application

yEd is built upon the commercial yFiles library and leverages yFiles' GraphML framework. Thus if you need to build a custom application that is able read GraphML files (especially those created by yEd), building that application on yFiles is the way to go. This is essentially the closest you can get to using "the GraphML sourcecode of the project as a base" (as you have put it).

For completeness sake, I would like to add that it is possible to implement your very own GraphML reader from scratch (i.e. without relying on yFiles), because GraphML is at its core just specially formatted text. However, doing so requires a lot of work and time.