[Monotone-devel] Drawing graphs

[Joel Crisp]

Hi Bruce

From the perspective of someone who has re-implemented the DOT algo 
from that paper, it is not as easy as it looks. Graphviz uses a number 
of tweaks, heuristics and some clever control features in the DOT 
format, and to get graphs which look as good as it produces you would 
have to implement a lot of code. Generally, graph layout is a field 
which combines science, art and heuristics to get the best results; 
attempting to duplicate the features of some of the tools has cost me a 
lot of time.

Trying to do the same with some simple iteration is not likely to work 
either, unless you have a very specialised graph (like the compiler 
output VCG excels at).

Hope this saves you some time!

Joel