[orless]

For everyone interested in algorithms behind Graphviz, here's a paper so start with:

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

This work is absolutely amazing. I've tried implementing it a few years ago (as an excervise when preparing for Google interview). So naive. I've found out that I have read each and every sentence extremely carefully to get things right. I got quite far but never finished the implementation. (And I did not get an offer from Google either.)

[mikhailfranco]

The clue is in the name - 1993. It is just a pile of incompatible heuristics. I have used it, but I feel its inadequacies like a stiletto to the heart. Draw a quadrilateral with NEATO and see how many times you get a hideous bow tie. Pathetic. Its penumbral effect has been to stifle any real progress in better rival open source libraries, and hence we are all so much more impoverished today.

[cscheid]

neato uses distance embedding methods. The paper linked describes Sugiyama-style rank embeddings as implemented in dot. 1) They're incomparable. 2) the theory behind neato was published in 2004 (http://www.graphviz.org/Documentation/GKN04.pdf).

There are research groups (I'm thinking of Tim Dwyer's specifically) that are specifically trying to improve the situation. When you say "it's just a pile of incompatible heuristics", it sounds like you haven't taken the time to try and implement a better solution.

Graph drawing is the kind of thing that seems trivial, right until you try to work on it.

(disclaimer: I'm clearly biased here since I worked with the people who wrote graphviz.)

[rout39574]

I'm a little taken aback at your vitriol. Is "Stifled other libraries" a synonym for "Does the job well enough that nothing else was able to compete" ? That's been my sense. A lingua franca for graph visualization, pervasively available.

I hardly think they'd turn away algorithmic contributions, if you've got some.

Do you have an example of your hideous bow ties? I don't usually use graphviz to 'draw' anything, so I don't really have the context to understand your complaint. I've never seen a result I think of as a hideous bow tie.

[mikhailfranco]

http://www.graphviz.org/pdf/neatoguide.pdf

Page 6 Figure 5.