Graph drawing and manipulation with LINK

Abstract

This paper introduces the LINK system as a flexible tool for the creation, manipulation, and drawing of graphs and hypergraphs. We describe the basic architecture of the system and illustrate its flexibility with several examples. LINK is distinguished from existing software for discrete mathematics by its layered interface, including a graphical user interface tied into an object-oriented Scheme language interface with access to Tk, and an extensible underlying set of C++ libraries. We conclude by briefly discussing roles LINK has played in research and education. 1 Background Over the past several years, there have been several efforts to construct software systems for discrete mathematics, and in particular, for the manipulation of graphs. None, however, has resulted in a product with influence comparable to the familiar symbolic mathematics packages. Some notable existing systems for discrete mathematics are Combinatorica [14], Steven Skiena's extension package for Mathematica, NETPAD [11] due to Nathaniel Dean and others at Bellcore, SetPlayer [1], due to Mark Goldberg and his students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Gregory Shannon et. al.'s GraphLab [13]. For various reasons, none of these systems has the potential to be a widely-useful environment for both graph manipulation and computation. The authors of these systems recognized this and proposed the development of LINK, which was to be a freely-available and portable software system for discrete mathematics overcoming the various shortcomings of existing systems. After three years of development, the system is now freely available from the LINK web site: http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/Projects/LINK.html. LINK features a 200 page on-line manual and an on-line tutorial. LINK's design philosophy placed flexibility as the highest priority, and this led to the selection of STk, Erick Gallesio's object-oriented Scheme language interface to John Ousterhout's portable, interpretive Tk graphics system. [12][6]. Tk enables involved graphics programming without any knowledge of the X-window system, and offers the advantages of interpretation and portability at the cost of speed. This means that the system is not appropriate for viewing massive data sets. Graph views with

Graph visualization and navigation in information visualization: A survey

“…Some libraries are directed at mathematicians and include large libraries of algorithms, while others are meant for more general application. Some of the libraries and frameworks that are available are GTL [45], LINK [8], GFC [21], GDT[55], and GVF [64]. Although there is no widely used standard for graph description formats, GML [66] and GraphXML [65] are available.…”

“…Graphs have also been used in an attempt to understand images and the transformations on them, where edges represent operations [85]. A system for viewing Bayesian Belief Networks [129] is one of a unique few (including [8], [63]) to employ animation for informative purposes. A highly interactive system called Constellation [95] has sophisticated zooming and highlighting features that facilitate the analysis of linguistic networks.…”

Guess

“…Other approaches, such as LINK [6] or Graphlet [14], use interpreted languages (Scheme and TCL, respectively) and are more related to our goals. Users of Graphlet are given access to various graph structures and algorithms and can manipulate the Tk GUI.…”

Graphlet: design and implementation of a graph editor

“…Tools like daVinci [5], DynaDAG [6], D-ABDUCTOR [7] and EDGE [8] primary focus on graph visualization. Finally, GD-Workbench [9], GraVis [10], GraphEd [11], Graphlet [12], the Graph Editor Toolkit [4], LINK [13] and VCG [14] combine an editor and a library of algorithms.…”