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On Nov 17, 2003, at 4:11 PM, Peter Simon wrote:

> We could have pseudo-Lombardi edges--curved in some fashion rather
> than dead
> straight.

Perhaps. But I suspect that the devil is in the details. The question
is, I assume, not really whether it's possible to connect vertices
using curved edges; certainly this is possible, and I suspect that some
graph drawing packages already do this. The difficulty is in coming up
with a *good* layout algorithm that uses edge curvature
"intelligently", as Lombardi's graphs do...and that works well in
general.

In any case, to really answer your original question, first we'd have
to figure out what mathematically characterizes a "Lombardi edge".
Perhaps this is already known; if you know, by all means tell us. :)

Regards,

Joshua O'Madadhain

>> On Nov 17, 2003, at 9:57 AM, Peter Simon wrote:
>>
>>> How long will it be before the various network visualization programs
>>> produce Lombardi edges?
>>
>> My guess: not soon, although I may be biased by the fact that I work
>> primarily with very large networks, and I am not an expert in graph
>> layout; I just know a couple of algorithms. Layout for such networks
>> is already computationally expensive enough without trying to get
>> fancy
>> about how edges should be drawn. I don't even have a good guess for
>> how to construct a general heuristic for doing Lombardi-style layout.
>> (How long did it take Lombardi to lay out his networks once he'd drawn
>> enough of these charts to find out what worked and what didn't?)

  jmadden@ics.uci.edu...Obscurium Per
Obscurius...www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden
   Joshua O'Madadhain: Information Scientist, Musician,
Philosopher-At-Tall
  It's that moment of dawning comprehension that I live for--Bill
Watterson
My opinions are too rational and insightful to be those of any
organization.

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