Drawing directed acyclic graphs: An experimental study

In this paper we consider the important class of directed acyclic graphs (D AGs), and present the results of a comparative study on four popular drawin g algorithms specifically developed for them. The study has been performed within a general experimental setting consisting of two large test suites o f DAGs and a set of quality measures. The focus of the experiments has been the practical behavior of the algorithms with a geometric foundation compa red to that of the algorithms with a topological foundation. The four algor ithms exhibit various trade-offs with respect to the quality measures consi dered, and none of them clearly outperforms the others. Our analysis has mo tivated the development of a new hybrid strategy for drawing DAGs that perf orms quite well in practice.