LayoutShow: A Signed Applet/Application for Graph Drawing and Experimentation

Abstract

LayoutShow is a Java-based multi-threaded applet/application for experimentation with graph drawing algorithms, particularly, force-directed algorithms. The motivation behind the development of this software is the lack of features that would help to experiment, and as a result, understand the behavior of force-directed algorithms in the existing graph drawing software. Some of these features include smooth node-based and iteration-based animations, display of running-time and iteration counts, and variety of initial layout algorithms. LayoutShow supports a number of force-directed graph drawing algorithms as well as layouts based on eigenvectors. Node-based and iteration-based animations have been implemented. In addition, the software provides some algorithms for producing non-random initial layouts for force-directed algorithms. File I/O using GML file format has been implemented. Furthermore, users of LayoutShow applet can choose to perform local file I/O since LayoutShow is a signed applet. To our knowledge, LayoutShow is the first graph drawing software with this feature.