The Architecture of a Prototype System for Drawing Data Structures

Abstract

Automatic drawing of aesthetically pleasing data structure diagrams is a challenging problem which has attracted much research attention. In building such a system, we are confronted with four basic problems: (1) proper user involvement, (2) good user customization facilities, (3) aesthetics, and (4) efficiency. Each of the above problems has been attacked separately in the past. In this paper, we describe a prototype which brings the above four issues together and builds a powerful, usable, and natural automatic diagram drawing system.