Introduction

Comments make RAPTOR flowcharts easy to understand by others. Its a good programming practice to add meaningful comments in to flowcharts. In this post, we will learn how to add comments to a RAPTOR flowcharts. Comments are ignored by the interpreter and compiler and are not executed during the run. Comments are meant for the human readers to understand the flowchart. Comments are used where the flowchart flow is complex and hard to understand by others.

Comments in Raptor Flowcharts

Raptor Comments in Flowchart

Adding a comment

To add a comment to a flowchart symbol in Novice & Intermediate mode to the flowchart, Right-click on the flowchart symbol and choose Comment. The comment appears as a chat bubble next to the flowchart symbol. Comments can be a single line or multi-line.

Another way is to choose from the menu: Edit >> Comment

Types of Comments

Header comment

Header comment is added at the beginning of the flowchart to describe the flowchart, and other meta data like Author, Date, Description of the flowchart etc.

Step Comment

Step comment is added to a step in the flowchart to describe the purpose of the step, logic etc. A flowchart can have multiple step comments if desired.

Header Comment

We can add programmer header comments to the flowchart Start symbol. Header comments include

Author of the flowchart/program.
Date when the program was written.
General program description of what the flowchart does.

Header Comment

Enter the comment text in the “Enter comment” dialog box. Once you have added the comment click on the Done button. We can double click on the comment bubbles to edit the comment text or modify the comment text. We can also drag and move the comment bubble from flowchart symbol to symbol.

Edit Comment Raptor

The comment would show up beside the symbol as shown in the picture.

Remove a comment

We can delete a comment by selecting it and Right-click choose the delete option.
Another way is to choose from the menu: Edit > Delete option.

Delete Comment

Comments add up to the documentation of the flowcharts and programs. They make the flowchart easy to understand by others. If you feel the flow is not self-explanatory add appropriate comments to make them understandable by others.

Comment in OO Mode

Switch the RAPTOR tool to OO Mode.

To add a comment to UML diagram,

Right-click >> New >> Comment

Comment in OO Mode

Double click to edit the comment.

Edit Comment Raptor

Tips

Follow the flowchart Rubric guidelines set by the Teacher/Professor. Add Header comments to explain the flowchart description, name, date etc.
Make Large flowcharts modular. Break the flowchart into smaller sub-charts, procedures. Add the purpose of each procedure as comment in the procedure block.
Change History: Add change history log to show how the flowchart evolved incrementally, fixing of errors etc.