A Focus and Constraint-Based Genetic Algorithm for Interactive Directed Graph Drawing

This paper presents a user-driven genetic algorithm for directed graph drawing. An interactive framework is considered where users can focus the algorithm on regions of the drawing that need major improvement, or include domain knowledge as layout constraints. The paper describes how focus and user constraints are managed by the genetic algorithm. The combination of user’s skills with automatic tools allows a more flexible and efficient optimization method, when compared to traditional non-interactive genetic algorithms. Issues regarding memory usage, processing time, solution representation and convergence are discussed here.