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Planar Stories of Graph Drawings: Algorithms and Experiments

Authors Carla Binucci , Sabine Cornelsen , Walter Didimo , Seok-Hee Hong , Eleni Katsanou , Maurizio Patrignani , Antonios Symvonis , Samuel Wolf

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ACM Subject Classification
  • Mathematics of computing → Graph algorithms
  • Mathematics of computing → Graph theory
  • Theory of computation → Graph algorithms analysis
Keywords
  • Graph Drawing
  • Dynamic Graphs
  • Graph Stories
  • Heuristics
  • ILP

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Abstract

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.

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Carla Binucci, Sabine Cornelsen, Walter Didimo, Seok-Hee Hong, Eleni Katsanou, Maurizio Patrignani, Antonios Symvonis, and Samuel Wolf. Planar Stories of Graph Drawings: Algorithms and Experiments. In 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 357, pp. 32:1-32:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.32

Author Details

Carla Binucci
  • University of Perugia, Italy
Sabine Cornelsen
  • University of Konstanz, Germany
Walter Didimo
  • University of Perugia, Italy
Seok-Hee Hong
  • University of Sydney, Australia
Eleni Katsanou
  • National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Maurizio Patrignani
  • Roma Tre University, Italy
Antonios Symvonis
  • National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Samuel Wolf
  • University of Würzburg, Germany

Funding

Carla Binucci and Walter Didimo were partially supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) under the PRIN Project no. 2022TS4Y3N – EXPAND and the PON Project RASTA, ARS01_00540; Maurizio Patrignani was partially supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) under PRIN Project no. 2022TS4Y3N - EXPAND.

Acknowledgements

This work started at the Bertinoro Workshop on Graph Drawing BWGD 2025.

Supplementary Materials

References

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