Vincent Le Chevalier wrote:
> You might take a look at GraphViz if you haven't done so already:
> http://www.graphviz.org/
> 
> I bet you'd find in their papers plenty of ideas to make a better 
> rendering... Assuming you want to do it by yourself and not just use 
> existing tools.

I'm currently looking through

http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation/TSE93.pdf

which describes the layout algorithm for dot.

Amusingly, many of the algorithmic steps appear to be identical to what 
I came up with myself. Specifically, cycles in the graph are broken 
internally, nodes are arranged into "ranks" (rows), and then the 
positioning algorithm decides where to put them. All of this is 
*identical* to my own program. What I don't have is a special 
algorithmic stage to rearrange the nodes (since I explicitly don't 
*want* their horizontal positioning rearranged for these particular 
graphs), and a stage for properly routine the edges (which is why they 
keep intersecting things).

It's... encouraging to know that I accidentally managed to get so much 
nearly right.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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