Minimum-change drawings for labeled graphs

The interest in algorithms that automate the process of information visualization by the usage of textual labels for features of interest within a visualization has increased with the advance in type-setting technology and the amount of information to be visualized. In this paper, we study minimum-change drawings for labeled graphs, adopting the boundary labeling model [6]. Changes within the graph may occur because of the actions of a user, which is able to insert new features within the visualization, delete previously placed features and change the sizes of the labels. Each time the user acts, a small change should be performed within the visualization in order to rearrange its components with respect to some optimization criterion. We model this problem and we also provide several heuristics to obtain "near-optimal" solutions.