[tenfingers]

I have nothing against the blocks&arrow model. I just find it [sometimes horribly] inefficient.

For instance, in a video-compositing application (something like nuke - to put a name) it makes sense, especially so you can represent/preview the state of the filter in the block itself, but it's far from being an efficient method to input or manipulate. If you have experience by programming in any classical language with a grammar, it should be self-evident.

I find myself thinking I could represent the same graph in a much more compact and logically structural way using a written grammar, albeit doing that loses some given visual aspects like previewing.

I was explicitly asking if there is anything else available.