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Documents authored by Dobler, Alexander

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.27
Geometry Matters in Planar Storyplans

Authors: Alexander Dobler, Maximilian Holzmüller, and Martin Nöllenburg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 357, 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025)

Abstract
A storyplan visualizes a graph G = (V,E) as a sequence of 𝓁 frames Γ₁, … , Γ_𝓁, each of which is a drawing of the induced subgraph G[V_i] of a vertex subset V_i ⊆ V. Moreover, each vertex v ∈ V is contained in a single consecutive sequence of frames Γ_i, … , Γ_j, all vertices and edges contained in consecutive frames are drawn identically, and the union of all frames is a drawing of G. In GD 2022, the concept of planar storyplans was introduced, in which each frame must be a planar (topological) drawing. Several (parameterized) complexity results for recognizing graphs that admit a planar storyplan were provided, including NP-hardness. In this paper, we investigate an open question posed in the GD paper and show that the geometric and topological settings of the planar storyplan problem differ: We provide an instance of a graph that admits a planar storyplan, but no planar geometric storyplan, in which each frame is a planar straight-line drawing. Still, by adapting the reduction proof from the topological to the geometric setting, we show that recognizing the graphs that admit planar geometric storyplans remains NP-hard.
Cite as

Alexander Dobler, Maximilian Holzmüller, and Martin Nöllenburg. Geometry Matters in Planar Storyplans. In 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 357, pp. 27:1-27:9, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{dobler_et_al:LIPIcs.GD.2025.27,
  author =	{Dobler, Alexander and Holzm\"{u}ller, Maximilian and N\"{o}llenburg, Martin},
  title =	{{Geometry Matters in Planar Storyplans}},
  booktitle =	{33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025)},
  pages =	{27:1--27:9},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-403-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{357},
  editor =	{Dujmovi\'{c}, Vida and Montecchiani, Fabrizio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.27},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-250135},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.27},
  annote =	{Keywords: geometric storyplan, planarity, straight-line drawing, dynamic graph drawing}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.39
Optimizing Wiggle in Storylines

Authors: Alexander Dobler, Tim Hegemann, Martin Nöllenburg, and Alexander Wolff

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 357, 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025)

Abstract
A storyline visualization shows interactions between characters over time. Each character is represented by an x-monotone curve. Time is mapped to the x-axis, and groups of characters that interact at a particular point t in time must be ordered consecutively in the y-dimension at x = t. The predominant objective in storyline optimization so far has been the minimization of crossings between (blocks of) characters. Building on this work, we investigate another important, but less studied quality criterion, namely the minimization of wiggle, i.e., the amount of vertical movement of the characters over time. Given a storyline instance together with an ordering of the characters at any point in time, we show that wiggle count minimization is NP-complete. In contrast, we provide algorithms based on mathematical programming to solve linear wiggle height minimization and quadratic wiggle height minimization efficiently. Finally, we introduce a new method for routing character curves that focuses on keeping distances between neighboring curves constant as long as they run in parallel. We have implemented our algorithms, and we conduct a case study that explores the differences between the three optimization objectives. We use existing benchmark data, but we also present a new use case for storylines, namely the visualization of rolling stock schedules in railway operation.
Cite as

Alexander Dobler, Tim Hegemann, Martin Nöllenburg, and Alexander Wolff. Optimizing Wiggle in Storylines. In 33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 357, pp. 39:1-39:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{dobler_et_al:LIPIcs.GD.2025.39,
  author =	{Dobler, Alexander and Hegemann, Tim and N\"{o}llenburg, Martin and Wolff, Alexander},
  title =	{{Optimizing Wiggle in Storylines}},
  booktitle =	{33rd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2025)},
  pages =	{39:1--39:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-403-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{357},
  editor =	{Dujmovi\'{c}, Vida and Montecchiani, Fabrizio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.39},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-250252},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2025.39},
  annote =	{Keywords: Storyline visualization, wiggle minimization, NP-complete, linear programming, quadratic programming, experimental analysis}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.22
On Minimizing Wiggle in Stacked Area Charts

Authors: Alexander Dobler and Martin Nöllenburg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 349, 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)

Abstract
Stacked area charts are a widely used visualization technique for numerical time series. The x-axis represents time, and the time series are displayed as horizontal, variable-height layers stacked on top of each other. The height of each layer corresponds to the time series values at each time point. The main aesthetic criterion for optimizing the readability of stacked area charts is the amount of vertical change of the borders between the time series in the visualization, called wiggle. While many heuristic algorithms have been developed to minimize wiggle, the computational complexity of minimizing wiggle has not been formally analyzed. In this paper, we show that different variants of wiggle minimization are NP-hard and even hard to approximate. We also present an exact mixed-integer linear programming formulation and compare its performance with a state-of-the-art heuristic in an experimental evaluation. Lastly, we consider a special case of wiggle minimization that corresponds to the fundamentally interesting and natural problem of ordering a set of numbers as to minimize their sum of absolute prefix sums. We show several complexity results for this problem that imply some of the mentioned hardness results for wiggle minimization.
Cite as

Alexander Dobler and Martin Nöllenburg. On Minimizing Wiggle in Stacked Area Charts. In 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 349, pp. 22:1-22:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{dobler_et_al:LIPIcs.WADS.2025.22,
  author =	{Dobler, Alexander and N\"{o}llenburg, Martin},
  title =	{{On Minimizing Wiggle in Stacked Area Charts}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)},
  pages =	{22:1--22:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-398-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{349},
  editor =	{Morin, Pat and Oh, Eunjin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.22},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-242530},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.22},
  annote =	{Keywords: Stacked area charts, NP-hardness, Mixed-integer linear programming}
}
Document
PACE Solver Description
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2024.29
PACE Solver Description: CRGone

Authors: Alexander Dobler

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 321, 19th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2024)

Abstract
We describe CRGone, our solver for the exact and parameterized track of the Pace Challenge 2024. It solves the problem of one-sided crossing minimization, is based on an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation with additional reduction rules, and is implemented in C++ using the ILP solver SCIP with Soplex.
Cite as

Alexander Dobler. PACE Solver Description: CRGone. In 19th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 321, pp. 29:1-29:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{dobler:LIPIcs.IPEC.2024.29,
  author =	{Dobler, Alexander},
  title =	{{PACE Solver Description: CRGone}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2024)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:4},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-353-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{321},
  editor =	{Bonnet, \'{E}douard and Rz\k{a}\.{z}ewski, Pawe{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2024.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-222558},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2024.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pace Challenge 2024, One-Layer Crossing Minimization, Exact Algorithm}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2024.31
Revisiting ILP Models for Exact Crossing Minimization in Storyline Drawings

Authors: Alexander Dobler, Michael Jünger, Paul J. Jünger, Julian Meffert, Petra Mutzel, and Martin Nöllenburg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 320, 32nd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2024)

Abstract
Storyline drawings are a popular visualization of interactions of a set of characters over time, e.g., to show participants of scenes in a book or movie. Characters are represented as x-monotone curves that converge vertically for interactions and diverge otherwise. Combinatorially, the task of computing storyline drawings reduces to finding a sequence of permutations of the character curves for the different time points, with the primary objective being crossing minimization of the induced character trajectories. In this paper, we revisit exact integer linear programming (ILP) approaches for this NP-hard problem. By enriching previous formulations with additional problem-specific insights and new heuristics, we obtain exact solutions for an extended new benchmark set of larger and more complex instances than had been used before. Our experiments show that our enriched formulations lead to better performing algorithms when compared to state-of-the–art modelling techniques. In particular, our best algorithms are on average 2.6-3.2 times faster than the state-of-the-art and succeed in solving complex instances that could not be solved before within the given time limit. Further, we show in an ablation study that our enrichment components contribute considerably to the performance of the new ILP formulation.
Cite as

Alexander Dobler, Michael Jünger, Paul J. Jünger, Julian Meffert, Petra Mutzel, and Martin Nöllenburg. Revisiting ILP Models for Exact Crossing Minimization in Storyline Drawings. In 32nd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 320, pp. 31:1-31:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{dobler_et_al:LIPIcs.GD.2024.31,
  author =	{Dobler, Alexander and J\"{u}nger, Michael and J\"{u}nger, Paul J. and Meffert, Julian and Mutzel, Petra and N\"{o}llenburg, Martin},
  title =	{{Revisiting ILP Models for Exact Crossing Minimization in Storyline Drawings}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2024)},
  pages =	{31:1--31:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-343-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{320},
  editor =	{Felsner, Stefan and Klein, Karsten},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2024.31},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-213159},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2024.31},
  annote =	{Keywords: Storyline drawing, crossing minimization, integer linear programming, algorithm engineering, computational experiments}
}
Document
PACE Solver Description
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2023.38
PACE Solver Description: Touiouidth

Authors: Gaétan Berthe, Yoann Coudert-Osmont, Alexander Dobler, Laure Morelle, Amadeus Reinald, and Mathis Rocton

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 285, 18th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2023)

Abstract
We describe Touiouidth, a twin-width solver for the exact-track of the 2023 PACE Challenge: Twin Width. Our solver is based on a simple branch and bound algorithm with search space reductions and is implemented in C++.
Cite as

Gaétan Berthe, Yoann Coudert-Osmont, Alexander Dobler, Laure Morelle, Amadeus Reinald, and Mathis Rocton. PACE Solver Description: Touiouidth. In 18th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 285, pp. 38:1-38:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{berthe_et_al:LIPIcs.IPEC.2023.38,
  author =	{Berthe, Ga\'{e}tan and Coudert-Osmont, Yoann and Dobler, Alexander and Morelle, Laure and Reinald, Amadeus and Rocton, Mathis},
  title =	{{PACE Solver Description: Touiouidth}},
  booktitle =	{18th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2023)},
  pages =	{38:1--38:4},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-305-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{285},
  editor =	{Misra, Neeldhara and Wahlstr\"{o}m, Magnus},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2023.38},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-194576},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2023.38},
  annote =	{Keywords: Twinwidth, Pace Challenge}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2022.44
Turbocharging Heuristics for Weak Coloring Numbers

Authors: Alexander Dobler, Manuel Sorge, and Anaïs Villedieu

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 244, 30th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2022)

Abstract
Bounded expansion and nowhere-dense classes of graphs capture the theoretical tractability for several important algorithmic problems. These classes of graphs can be characterized by the so-called weak coloring numbers of graphs, which generalize the well-known graph invariant degeneracy (also called k-core number). Being NP-hard, weak-coloring numbers were previously computed on real-world graphs mainly via incremental heuristics. We study whether it is feasible to augment such heuristics with exponential-time subprocedures that kick in when a desired upper bound on the weak coloring number is breached. We provide hardness and tractability results on the corresponding computational subproblems. We implemented several of the resulting algorithms and show them to be competitive with previous approaches on a previously studied set of benchmark instances containing 86 graphs with up to 183831 edges. We obtain improved weak coloring numbers for over half of the instances.
Cite as

Alexander Dobler, Manuel Sorge, and Anaïs Villedieu. Turbocharging Heuristics for Weak Coloring Numbers. In 30th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 244, pp. 44:1-44:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{dobler_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2022.44,
  author =	{Dobler, Alexander and Sorge, Manuel and Villedieu, Ana\"{i}s},
  title =	{{Turbocharging Heuristics for Weak Coloring Numbers}},
  booktitle =	{30th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2022)},
  pages =	{44:1--44:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-247-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{244},
  editor =	{Chechik, Shiri and Navarro, Gonzalo and Rotenberg, Eva and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2022.44},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-169820},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2022.44},
  annote =	{Keywords: Structural sparsity, parameterized algorithms, parameterized complexity, fixed-parameter tractability}
}
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