We consider upward-planar layered drawings of directed graphs, i.e., crossing-free drawings in which each edge is drawn as a y-monotone curve going upward from its tail to its head, and the y-coordinates of the vertices are integers. The span of an edge in such a drawing is the absolute difference between the y-coordinates of its endpoints, and the span of the drawing is the maximum span of any edge. The span of an upward-planar graph is the minimum span over all its upward-planar drawings. We study the problem of determining the span of upward-planar graphs and provide both combinatorial and algorithmic results. On the combinatorial side, we present upper and lower bounds for the span of directed trees. On the algorithmic side, we show that the problem of determining the span of an upward-planar graph is NP-complete already for directed trees and for biconnected single-source graphs. Moreover, we give efficient algorithms for several graph families with a bounded number of sources, including st-planar graphs and graphs where the planar or upward-planar embedding is prescribed. Furthermore, we show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the vertex cover number and the treedepth plus the span.

An outer-string representation of a graph is an intersection representation in which each vertex is represented by a curve that is contained in the unit disk and has at least one endpoint on the boundary of the unit disk. In an outer-1-string representation the curves representing any two vertices are in addition allowed to intersect at most once. In this paper, we consider the following constrained version: Given a graph G plus a cyclic order v1, . . . , vn of the vertices in G, test whether G has an outer-string or an outer-1-string representation in which the curves representing v1, . . . , vn intersect the boundary of the unit disk in this order. We first show that a graph has an outer-string representation for all possible cyclic orders of the vertices if and only if the graph is the complement of a chordal graph. Then we turn towards the situation where one particular cyclic order of the vertices is fixed. We characterize the chordal graphs admitting a constrained outer-string representation and the trees and cycles admitting a constrained outer-1-string representation. The characterizations yield polynomial-time recognition and construction algorithms; in the case of outer-1-string representations the run time is linear. We also show how to decide in polynomial time whether an arbitrary graph admits a constrained L-shaped outer-1-string representation. In an L-shaped representation the curves are 1-bend orthogonal polylines anchored on a horizontal line, and they are contained in the half-plane below that line. However, not even all paths with a constrained outer-1-string representation admit one with L-shapes. We show that 2-bend orthogonal polylines are sufficient for trees and cycles with a constrained outer-1-string representation.

We address the problem of computing a dynamic visualization of a geometric graph G as a sequence of frames. Each frame shows only a portion of the graph but their union covers G entirely. The two main requirements of our dynamic visualization are: (i) guaranteeing drawing stability, so to preserve the user’s mental map; (ii) keeping the visual complexity of each frame low. To satisfy the first requirement, we never change the position of the vertices. Regarding the second requirement, we avoid edge crossings in each frame. More precisely, in the first frame we visualize a suitable subset of non-crossing edges; in each subsequent frame, exactly one new edge enters the visualization and all the edges that cross with it are deleted. We call such a sequence of frames a planar story of G. Our goal is to find a planar story whose minimum number of edges contemporarily displayed is maximized (i.e., a planar story that maximizes the minimum frame size). Besides studying our model from a theoretical point of view, we also design and experimentally compare different algorithms, both exact techniques and heuristics. These algorithms provide an array of alternative trade-offs between efficiency and effectiveness, also depending on the structure of the input graph.

Not every directed acyclic graph (DAG) whose underlying undirected graph is planar admits an upward planar drawing. We are interested in pushing the notion of upward drawings beyond planarity by considering upward $k$-planar drawings of DAGs in which the edges are monotonically increasing in a common direction and every edge is crossed at most $k$ times for some integer $k \ge 1$. We show that the number of crossings per edge in a monotone drawing is in general unbounded for the class of bipartite outerplanar, cubic, or bounded pathwidth DAGs. However, it is at most two for outerpaths and it is at most quadratic in the bandwidth in general. From the computational point of view, we prove that testing upward-$k$-planarity is NP-complete already for $k=1$ and even for restricted instances for which upward planarity testing is polynomial. On the positive side, we can decide in linear time whether a single-source DAG admits an upward 1-planar drawing in which all vertices are incident to the outer face.

Abstract A morph is a continuous transformation between two representations of a graph. We consider the problem of morphing between contact representations of a plane graph. In an $${\mathcal {F}}$$ F -contact representation of a plane graph G, vertices are realized by internally disjoint elements from a family $${\mathcal {F}}$$ F of connected geometric objects. Two such elements touch if and only if their corresponding vertices are adjacent. These touchings also induce the same embedding as in G. In a morph between two $${\mathcal {F}}$$ F -contact representations we insist that at each time step (continuously throughout the morph) we have an $${\mathcal {F}}$$ F -contact representation. We focus on the case when $$\mathcal {F}$$ F is the family of triangles in $$\mathbb {R}^2$$ R 2 that are the lower-right half of axis-parallel rectangles. Such RT-representations exist for every plane graph and right triangles are one of the simplest families of shapes supporting this property. Moreover, they naturally correspond to 3-orientations. Thus, they provide a natural case to study regarding morphs of contact representations of plane graphs. We characterize the pairs of RT-representations admitting a morph between each other via the respective 3-orientations. Our characterization leads to a polynomial-time algorithm to decide whether there is a morph between two RT-representations of an n-vertex plane triangulation, and, if so, computes a morph with $${\mathcal {O}}(n^2)$$ O ( n 2 ) steps. Each of these steps is a linear morph moving the endpoints of each triangle at constant speed along straight-line trajectories. Our characterization also implies that for 4-connected plane triangulations there is a morph between every pair of RT-representations where the “top-most” triangle in both representations corresponds to the same vertex.

In an upward-planar L-drawing of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) each edge $e$ is represented as a polyline composed of a vertical segment with its lowest endpoint at the tail of $e$ and of a horizontal segment ending at the head of $e$. Distinct edges may overlap, but not cross. Recently, upward-planar L-drawings have been studied for $st$-graphs, i.e., planar DAGs with a single source $s$ and a single sink $t$ containing an edge directed from $s$ to $t$. It is known that a plane $st$-graph, i.e., an embedded $st$-graph in which the edge $(s,t)$ is incident to the outer face, admits an upward-planar L-drawing if and only if it admits a bitonic $st$-ordering, which can be tested in linear time. We study upward-planar L-drawings of DAGs that are not necessarily $st$-graphs. On the combinatorial side, we show that a plane DAG admits an upward-planar L-drawing if and only if it is a subgraph of a plane $st$-graph admitting a bitonic $st$-ordering. This allows us to show that not every tree with a fixed bimodal embedding admits an upward-planar L-drawing. Moreover, we prove that any acyclic cactus with a single source (or a single sink) admits an upward-planar L-drawing, which respects a given outerplanar embedding if there are no transitive edges. On the algorithmic side, we consider DAGs with a single source (or a single sink). We give linear-time testing algorithms for these DAGs in two cases: (i) when the drawing must respect a prescribed embedding and (ii) when no restriction is given on the embedding, but it is biconnected and series-parallel.

Abstract In geographic data analysis, one is often given point data of different categories (such as facilities of a university categorized by department). Drawing upon recent research on set visualization, we want to visualize category membership by connecting points of the same category with visual links. Existing approaches that follow this path usually insist on connecting all members of a category, which may lead to many crossings and visual clutter. We propose an approach that avoids crossings between connections of different categories completely. Instead of connecting all data points of the same category, we subdivide categories into smaller, local clusters where needed. We do a case study comparing the legibility of drawings produced by our approach and those by existing approaches. In our problem formulation, we are additionally given a graph G on the data points whose edges express some sort of proximity. Our aim is to find a subgraph G′ of G with the following properties: (i) edges connect only data points of the same category, (ii) no two edges cross, and (iii) the number of connected components (clusters) is minimized. We then visualize the clusters in G′. For arbitrary graphs, the resulting optimization problem, Cluster Minimization, is NP‐hard (even to approximate). Therefore, we introduce two heuristics. We do an extensive benchmark test on real‐world data. Comparisons with exact solutions indicate that our heuristics do astonishing well for certain relative‐neighborhood graphs.

We consider the problem of morphing between contact representations of a plane graph. In a contact representation of a plane graph, vertices are realized by internally disjoint elements from a family of connected geometric objects. Two such elements touch if and only if their corresponding vertices are adjacent. These touchings also induce the same embedding as in the graph. In a morph between two contact representations we insist that at each time step (continuously throughout the morph) we have a contact representation of the same type. We focus on the case when the geometric objects are triangles that are the lower-right half of axis-parallel rectangles. Such RT-representations exist for every plane graph and right triangles are one of the simplest families of shapes supporting this property. Thus, they provide a natural case to study regarding morphs of contact representations of plane graphs. We study piecewise linear morphs, where each step is a linear morph moving the endpoints of each triangle at constant speed along straight-line trajectories. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm that decides whether there is a piecewise linear morph between two RT-representations of a plane triangulation, and, if so, computes a morph with a quadratic number of linear morphs. As a direct consequence, we obtain that for 4-connected plane triangulations there is a morph between every pair of RT-representations where the "top-most" triangle in both representations corresponds to the same vertex. This shows that the realization space of such RT-representations of any 4-connected plane triangulation forms a connected set.

Motivated by an application in image processing, we introduce the grid-leveling problem. It turns out to be the dual of a minimum cost flow problem for an apex graph with a grid graph as its basis. We present an O(n3/2) algorithm for this problem. The optimum solution recovers missing DC coefficients from image and video coding by Discrete Cosine Transform used in popular standards like JPEG and MPEG. Generally, we prove that there is an O(n3/2) min-cost flow algorithm for networks that, after removing one node, are planar, have bounded degrees, and have bounded capacities. The costs may be arbitrary.