DIagrams Through ASCII Art:

ditaa is a small command-line utility, written in Java, that can convert diagrams drawn using ASCII art into proper bitmap graphics. ditaa interprets ASCII art as a series of open and closed shapes, but it also uses special markup syntax to increase the possibilities of shapes and symbols that can be rendered.

Works as advertised. I’m not sure if it has any worth outside of its curiosity value. I found it quicker by far to flowchart with a GUI application than to laboriously create ASCII artwork equivalents for ditaa to process. Neat hack though! [via]