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That's one of its main uses. One thing it does not do (or I don't know how) and graphviz does, though, is arranging nodes intelligently so as to minimize clutte

That's one of its main uses. One thing it does not do (or I don't know how) and graphviz does, though, is arranging nodes intelligently so as to minimize clutter and edge distances. That's one of the nice things in graphviz.

enriquto 6y ago
> One thing it does not do (or I don't know how) and graphviz does, though, is arranging nodes intelligently That's exactly what "graph drawing" means [0]. Can tikz choose the position of the vertices itself or you have to specify the positions yourself? If it is you who chooses the positions, then tikz does not do "graph drawing". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_drawing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_drawing
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mkl 6y ago
  Yes, TikZ can position the vertices itself. E.g. http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/papers/2011/2011-configurable-graph-drawing-algorithms-jannis-pohlmann.pdf http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/papers/2011/2011-con... http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/mitarbeiter/tantau/2012-gd-presentation.pdf http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/mitarbeiter/tantau/2... https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/203692/how-to-automatically-draw-a-graph https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/203692/how-to-automa...
  - enriquto 6y ago
    That's great! Did these people really implement graph drawing algorithms as latex macros, or does it call an external program? I'm afraid to look it myself, lest I discover the truth.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Some of it is LaTeX, but the more intensive algorithms are done with embedded Lua, using LuaLaTeX. There is no external program.
      - nyir 6y ago
        Wow, that was a long time ago, very fun project to work on. But yeah, without deep knowledge of the TeX side you'd likely still struggle a bit to understand how the two sides interact, at least it was a bit of a struggle for me, maybe / hopefully it got a bit better in the meantime. And thankfully LuaLaTex was ready enough at that time, I can't imagine how bad it would've been to do this in pure Tex ...
        enriquto 6y ago
        Are you one of the authors of tikz graphdrawing?
        nyir 6y ago
        Just a former student who participated in the first version (let's say draft) of it, which had no really interesting algorithms in it yet, just the overall graph framework and integration with the rest of PGF/TikZ. Really cool project though, one of the few that made it outside of uni.
programLyrique 6y ago
A library of pgf/tikz that requires lualatex can do graph drawing. It is called "graphdrawing" actually. It can do the layout automatically and so on. You can add new automatic layouts using lua. It's described in part IV of the pgf manual.

enriquto 6y ago

> One thing it does not do (or I don't know how) and graphviz does, though, is arranging nodes intelligently That's exactly what "graph drawing" means [0]. Can tikz choose the position of the vertices itself or you have to specify the positions yourself? If it is you who chooses the positions, then tikz does not do "graph drawing". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_drawing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_drawing

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mkl 6y ago
Yes, TikZ can position the vertices itself. E.g. http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/papers/2011/2011-configurable-graph-drawing-algorithms-jannis-pohlmann.pdf http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/papers/2011/2011-con... http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/mitarbeiter/tantau/2012-gd-presentation.pdf http://www.tcs.uni-luebeck.de/downloads/mitarbeiter/tantau/2... https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/203692/how-to-automatically-draw-a-graph https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/203692/how-to-automa...
- enriquto 6y ago
  That's great! Did these people really implement graph drawing algorithms as latex macros, or does it call an external program? I'm afraid to look it myself, lest I discover the truth.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Some of it is LaTeX, but the more intensive algorithms are done with embedded Lua, using LuaLaTeX. There is no external program.
    - nyir 6y ago
      Wow, that was a long time ago, very fun project to work on. But yeah, without deep knowledge of the TeX side you'd likely still struggle a bit to understand how the two sides interact, at least it was a bit of a struggle for me, maybe / hopefully it got a bit better in the meantime. And thankfully LuaLaTex was ready enough at that time, I can't imagine how bad it would've been to do this in pure Tex ...
      - enriquto 6y ago
        Are you one of the authors of tikz graphdrawing?
        nyir 6y ago
        Just a former student who participated in the first version (let's say draft) of it, which had no really interesting algorithms in it yet, just the overall graph framework and integration with the rest of PGF/TikZ. Really cool project though, one of the few that made it outside of uni.

programLyrique 6y ago

A library of pgf/tikz that requires lualatex can do graph drawing. It is called "graphdrawing" actually. It can do the layout automatically and so on. You can add new automatic layouts using lua. It's described in part IV of the pgf manual.