DAGView: An Approach for Visualizing Large Graphs

In this paper, we propose a novel visualization framework called DAGView. The aim of DAGView is to produce clear visualizations of directed acyclic graphs in which every edge and the potential existence of a path can be immediately spotted by the user. Several criteria that users identified as important in a layout are met, such as underlying grid, crossings and bends that appear perpendicular. The main algorithm is based on the layout of directed acyclic graphs but can be extended to handle directed graphs with cycles and undirected graphs, taking into account user preferences and/or constraints. Important tasks that are used in user studies are performed efficiently within the DAGView framework.

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